“Cor! I do so love this world! Telepathy, teleportation, you can go anywhere and do anything!”

 

“If I may offer a critique on your superheroes from the perspective of an outsider, I believe you’re too all too set on the idea of never killing a person, cold as that may sound. I was raised to be a doctor, like my father and his father before him. I was raised to heal people–first, do no harm and all that. That was supposed to be the cornerstone of who I was as a man. And I thought it was for a long, long time. But when I got my powers, I knew I couldn’t just watch as Antaeus’ men fought the Empire, not when I could do something to help. I did small things at first. If they were being chased, I’d make them invisible so they’d escape. If they were fighting, I’d turn their opponents’ eyes invisible to blind them and give Antaeus’ men an advantage. But I knew I had to do more. I couldn’t just watch and wait for things to happen. I had to get involved, I had to work with the Rebellion. But I knew that would mean being responsible for murders, indirectly or othewise. You don’t blind people in the middle of a firefight and not expect someone to swing their heat ray into their friends…What I’m trying to say is that there are things that a man will kill other men over and sleep relatively sound at night for doing so. There’s something out there that you will kill for…and I think, from my personal experience, that it’s better to find it before it finds you.”

 

Name:

 

Claude Kemp

 

Claude is the grandson of Dr. Herbert Kemp, the only person the insane Dr. Thomas Griffin ever considered a friend, insomuch as anyone could be his friend, because Dr. Kemp showed mercy to Griffin and tried to stop a mob from beating him to death.

 

Supername:

Invisible Knight

 

It took awhile for Claude to pick his supername. He wasn’t used to the tradition, and he was a little overwhelmed by all the possible names he could pick. Eventually, he picked something simple–Invisible Knight. He was invisible, and he was a member of Antaeus’ Imperial Knights.

 

During Antaeus’ rebellion, Claude was given the codename Gyges, as in the Ring of Gyges. Claude never liked the name, but he wasn’t going to argue with his leader over it. Gyges was a bad guy. He killed the king, seduced the queen, and took the throne. Dr. Griffin was a Gyges, not he. Besides, it was just a very funny sounding name.

 

Average Grade:

 

D-

 

Claude is in an interesting position when it comes to his academics. At first glance, he’s struggling, which isn’t that surprising since he’s from a less advanced world and the remedial course he’s on is very intense. Imagine if you skipped your mirabology and manesology classes in middle school and now suddenly you had to be brought up to speed all the way to the high school level. But Dr. Freeman had a hunch he wasn’t applying himself, and upon pressing him found that she was right.

 

Claude knows very well that he and Lanty are being judged by those back home in Willow-Wells. He’s the only human from Willow-Wells at Martin’s, and Lanty is the only beastfolk. Beastfolk are stigmatized for their average intelligence being less than that of man. Some people don’t think a beastolk like Lanty has any purpose holding a position in the Imperial government, let alone the position of Minister of Multiverse Affairs. Claude knows that outperforming Lanty would give these people plenty of ammunition for debates in Antaeus’ court.

 

Emergency Response Class:

 

3

 

As a member of his world’s one-and-only superteam, the Imperial Knights, Claude is going all the way when it comes to Emergency Response. He wants to take what he learns at Martin’s and bring it back home to pass on to his fellow Knights. 

 

Claude is also a very energetic, positive young man and takes to the challenge of ERC 3 with a full heart. He, like Lanty, finds even its grisliest, bloodiest sims fun. Photite holograms can’t frighten someone that’s seen real combat and real wounds.

 

Claude is very happy to be learning how to combine his powers with others to non-lethally subdue opponents and hopes to apply these tactics back home with the Imperial Knights. While Claude and Lanty never went out of their way to kill people, they wanted insurgents fighting against men with orders to arrest them alive or dead. Sometimes their hands were forced. Claude claims that he’s killed at least twelve soldiers, mostly by causing heat ray operators to accidentally shoot their own side. He doesn’t know a single name. He’s afraid to learn them.

 

Personalized Curriculum:

 

Remediation, Advanced Multiverse Studies, Exploration Society, Telepathic Development

 

With Claude being from a world that lags far behind our own in technology, he’s simply not qualified to take classes with other boys his age. His remediation class is very strenuous, it has to be, and it doesn’t leave him much time for other classes. Still, he’s in Advanced Multiverse Studies alongside his friend Lanty, more for her sake than his. Lanty is his world’s first Minister of Multiverse and tosses herself into Advanced Multiverse Studies to learn as much about the multiverse as fast as she can. Claude is along for the ride so Lanty can have someone from back home to bounce ideas off of. She’s going to have to explain to people back in Willow-Wells how the multiverse works, so if her summaries of different worlds sound good to Claude she knows she’s on the right track.

 

Lanty and Claude are also part of Dr. Freeman and Ms. Garrett’s “alternative ARGO” program, exploration Society. The Exploration Society was created after Willow Collins, known to ARGO as Vector 11, expressed displeasure with how the organization treated her as an asset and not a person. The Exploration Society was meant to allow Willow and any other Martin’s students not satisfied with ARGO as a Contact Education anchor to safely explore the multiverse, and it was while under the supervision of a nascent version of the Exploration Society that watched over Willow as she discovered Willow-Wells. Since then, the Society has grown into a network for all the multiverse kids discovered through Willow’s jaunt into the multiverse. Even kids not technically enrolled in Martin’s like Starshot’s sister Starwind and Elaine Crow.

 

Claude is also enrolled in Telepathic Development, though only at the level of auditing the class, he’s much too busy with remediation to take it as a full class. We know from Dr. Griffin and our own scans of Claude that Claude can see while invisible through what Griffin called a “photo-sense.” This photo-sense is a limited form of telepathy. Invisible Men use their minds to see where their eyes fail. Through the use of an updated version of the original Invisible Man formula, Dr. Griffin turned himself into a “fourth generation” Invisible Man who used an enhanced  photo-sense to telepathically mask his presence from his foes and trap them in a mental projection of London. As Griffin awaits for his execution date, he refuses to divulge the secrets of his ultimate accomplishment, not even if the Redwood Empire offered him his life–which is fine for Antaeus as he wasn’t going to offer Dr. Griffin his life under any circumstance.

 

Once Claude finishes remediation and gets caught up on how telepathy and the noosphere work, he’ll be able to throw himself fully into telepathic development and not only match Dr. Griffin but surpass him as a fifth generation Invisible Man. He’ll be able to be, under Ms. Cryptic’s calculations, completely, totally invisible to even the keenest telepathic detection. He’ll be so invisible that the mind will reflexively assume thoughts he generates telepathically are coming from itself. Claude will be able to think “move your right hand” and his target’s brain will understand it as a natal thought of its own creation. Ms. Cryptic calls it “suggestive mind control,” and it should be far trickier than the usual kind. With most forms of telepathic assault, the target is able to sense that something is happening to their mind. That’s not the case with Claude. His untapped power is, frankly, insidious.

 

But let’s take it one step at a time. First let’s get him to pass middle school telepathy tests. Then we can focus on turning him into a telepathic powerhouse.

 

Contact Education:

 

Weft Authority, Hal and Greer Hospital, Swordsmanship with Ms. Bisclavret

 

Weft Authority is rather self-explanatory. As a member of one of the newest additions to our multiverse community, Claude is close to the Weft Authority who conduct diplomacy and negotiations with all known civilizations of the multiverse. He serves as Lanty’s aid while she conducts her duties with the Weft Authority as Willow-Well’s Minister of Multiverse Affairs. He’s saved her from being late to more than a few meetings.

 

Before he was transformed into an invisible man by Dr. Griffin, Claude was working hard on  becoming a doctor like his father and his father before him. As he stands now, our world’s medical science is far beyond what he studied as a college freshman, but that makes him all the more fascinated by it. We have him shadowing the medicos at Hal and Greer so Claude can indulge his curiosity. He’s never in the way and the staff has stated that he’s helpfully observant in his own way. He doesn’t know how a nanite screening works, but he does have practical health knowledge. The strangest thing he’s said he’s learned about our world since arriving is that people are on average less healthy than they are back home. 

 

“Somehow, in a world where a person can know everything about themselves down to the allele, people don’t put forward the least amount of effort to keep themselves healthy. They sit around all day on the noosphere, trapped in their own heads, and eat, eat, eat. And it’s always stuff that comes out of a factory. Do people not keep kitchens in this world? Your world doesn’t have much to fear from typhoid or tuberculosis, but I’m afraid you are in the midst of a most virulent and stubborn outbreak of decadence. I believe its only inoculation is true need. I never thought I’d sing the praises of my world’s hardships, yet here I am!”

 

Claude is a member of the Imperial Knights, his world’s first and so far only superteam, but he carefully conducted himself in the manner of a noble knight long before Antaeus decided to call his superheroes knights. When Claude made the decision to abandon a promising career as a doctor and fully join the rebellion under the codename Gyges, he looked for a strong, highly idealized model for how he should act as a soldier and found it in Arthurian legend. No lesser model would do. To become a rebel, he had to turn his back on the legacy of his father and grandfather, the best, most noble men he had ever known. No one less than King Arthur and his knights could replace them.

 

Claude considers himself a modern knight, and because he does so his powers cause him no small amount of shame, though he only admits this to those close to him. It’s always  It’s always frustrated Claude that his powers make him a caitiff by the standards of chivalric combat. He doesn’t challenge people to one-on-one combat. He hides in the back, invisible, and blinds his opponents.

 

It says a great deal about how much Claude believed in the values of Antaeus’ rebellion that he would break his own code of conduct to better tactically serve the rebellion.

 

About a month into joining the rebellion, Claude took to wearing a sword at his side. The sword never saw use, unlike the LeMat revolver hanging in an armpit holster above the scabbard. He’s very fond of his sword, and when he learned that Burning Bright took sword lessons from the Monster League’s Chevalier Louve, the Wolf Knight, he asked if he could join in.

 

Ms. Bisclavret teaches a form of swordplay developed for Shapeshifters known as l’art, and while it’s incompatible with humans (certain techniques involve tapping into a Shapeshifter’s ability to shift mass across extradimensional boundaries to make the blade vanish and suddenly reappear) Ms. Bisclavret is also familiar with l’art’s derivative destreza and is more than willing to teach him that.

 

Claude’s been making good progress. Swordplay isn’t complementary to his powerset at all, but it makes him happy. After all he’s been through on his homeworld, he deserves to have a hobby for himself. And who knows? Maybe one day he’ll find a way to make swords work for him as a superhero. There are a lot of superheroes out there with simple enhancile powersets that manage to make swords work for them. Just look up Chic Carter sometime.

 

Hyperstasis:

 

Willow-Wells Type Light Manipulation, Limited Telepathy

 

Third Generation Invisible Man

 

Due to experiments conducted on him by the infamous Dr. Griffin, Claude is a “third generation” invisible man. With a thought, he can not only make himself invisible, but make anyone or anything he sees invisible. He can also undo invisibility such as that possessed by the Redwood Empire’s invisible police known as the “Frogs.”

 

A favorite trick of Claude is to blind enemies by making their heads invisible. The human eye functions by absorbing light, thus a transparent eye cannot see. Invisible men of all generations got around this fact by their serums granting what Griffin called in his notes “a photo-sense” which he theorized worked by light rays passing through the invisible man and leaving impressions upon some hither-to unknown process of the human brain, possibly an evolutionary vestige of when man was something slimy that crawled through dark waters. What photo-sense actually was is a limited form of telepathy. With photo-sense, Claude is able to “see” everything happening around himself for a distance of about 180 feet, even through walls and the ground. Beyond 180 feet however, he’s blind. To get a good look at things in the distance, he can make his eyes visible through what he calls “binocular mode.” Claude can also bestow photo-sense on those he turns invisible so that while his opponents are blinded by being turned invisible, his allies are not.

 

Claude’s photo-sense is notably greater than that of the second generation invisible men known as Frogs. The Frogs are named such because they use whistles and other noise makers to signal formations. Their photo-sense allows them to see, but not to see the invisible. Claude’s does. Frogs and other invisible men appear to him like walking waterfalls of color, indistinct but highly noticeable.

 

Claude’s powers made him indispensable to Ant’s rebellion. With a wave of his hand, he could uncover and humiliate an entire Frog patrol. He could make a Rebellion strike force as invisible as he was. He could throw an entire regiment of Giants into disarray by suddenly making certain individuals invisible in the midst of formations. But Claude was never terribly fond of his powers. He always considered himself a knight in the Arthurian sense. He hated using such tactics as hiding from enemies and blinding them from a distance, but he couldn’t deny their effectiveness, and so he used them time and time again. He believed that the cause of the Rebellion was worth more than his personal honor.

 

For emergencies, but mostly for his self image, he likes to carry around a sword he made himself from discarded metal gathered from around Poseidon, the Rebellion base. Somewhat more practical is the LeMat revolver he carries on his person, originally a simple percussion revolver, now upgraded to one of Urban Ranger’s special guns, specifically a LeMat with an extradimensional magazine that never runs out of ammo.

 

Invisible Men Before Claude

 

It’s a tragic fact that Willow-Wells’ first superhuman was a sociopathic madman. It’s also tragic that we can’t fully discuss Claude’s powers without bringing him into it.

 

Dr. Timothy Griffin’s history is partially recorded via Fox echoes in a book from our world, HG Wells’ The Invisible Man. Griffin was originally a London medical student, one of many fresh faces interested in applying the salvage of the War of Worlds to medical science, though his reasons were entirely selfish. Griffin was a narcissistic albino interested in curing his condition. All other advancements were secondary to this one supreme goal. Eventually, he left the medical field for optics in 1896 after reading about an advancement gained from reverse-engineering Martian heat rays.

 

Scientists had discovered at long last how the heat rays worked. They worked by bombarding an area with an intensely energetic form of electro-magnetic radiation that produced so much heat that a glancing blow liquified targets and a direct hit vaporized them. This radiation had the smallest wavelength of any known form of electro-magnetic radiation, so small the waves passed through the gaps of atoms and penetrated through anything short of several plates of solid lead.

 

In our world, this radiation became known as gamma radiation because of Villard and Rutherford, but in this world they became known as Martian radiation. The Martians had clearly discovered it first, after all.

 

But scientists found that heat rays didn’t just project and control Martian radiation. The heart rays could be modified to work on more conventional forms of electro-magnetic radiation such as radio waves and the visible spectrum of light.

 

Scientists had demonstrated that a modified heat ray could bend and distort light. It could make objects blur as if they were being seen through a veil of water. It could even make objects vanish entirely.

 

This gave Griffin an idea. He, like several medical students, had read from the journal of mad vivisectionist Dr. Moreau, whose island of misshapen creations was met with universal revulsion and condemnation. If Moreau had survived his creations, he likely would have been executed for crimes against humanity and nature. But morality aside, his work was on a completely different level than the rest of the world. He was a sculptor and animals his clay. Though he never made a man out of animals, he made humanoids capable of human-like action. Some could even speak. In his notes, Griffin believed he found a way to darken biological tissue through the application of radioactive chemicals.

 

Several animal experiments later and Griffin believed he had something–not something to cure his albinism, but something to take it to the opposite extreme.

 

Dr. Griffin thought “Why would I be concerned with how people saw me if they couldn’t see me?”

 

And then he thought, “Why would I be concerned about people at all if they couldn’t see me?”

 

Dr. Griffin injected himself with a chemical solution and became his world’s first hyperstatic via secondary hyperstasis in 1897. 

 

After becoming invisible, he burned his lab and the boarding house he occupied (not caring at all for those trapped in the blaze) to fake his death and erase his identity. He was truly an invisible man without a face, without a past, and only his disgusting appetites to drive him. But life as an invisible man was harder than he realized. He couldn’t walk in crowds without being battered. He couldn’t walk outside in harsh weather and be invisible, not unless he wanted to freeze or burn. He had to wear clothes, and that meant either looking like a headless man or a mummy with wrappings on his face. He could never be a normal man again, with all the privilege that entailed.

 

Dr. Griffin quickly realized he had bitten off more than he could chew and sought refuge in a small inn at Iping, West Sussex where he worked feverishly for a way to reverse his invisibility. He paid for his lodging and materials by robbing the local stores, which brought the police to suspect the surrounding neighborhood. This coupled with mounting frustrations at his lack of success caused him to reveal himself and lash out violently. The mask came off, and he was going to make the world pay for making him take it off.

 

Pursued by the law for his actions, Dr. Griffin took shelter in a house in the South Downs that, by chance, happened to be owned by someone he recognized from medical school–a Dr. Vincent Kemp. Believing that Kemp, as a fellow man of science, would understand him, Griffin confides in him, and it is through Kemp (and Wells) that history knows of how the first invisible man came to be.

 

Griffin told Kemp that he was going to make the world pay. He was done trying to reverse his invisibility. He was a fool for even trying to. Now he was going to embark on nothing less than a murderous campaign of terror against all of England.

 

There was no aim to this plan, nor end. He was simply going to kill and terrorize people because that to a mind like Dr. Griffin was a rational response to the indignities he had suffered.

 

People were going to die. Lots of people. And he was going to have a lot of fun doing it. And he wanted Kemp to be along for the ride as his confederate. Because asking an old acquaintance from medical school to help with mass murder made perfect sense to a man like Dr. Griffin.

 

Dr. Griffin had always been a sociopath. But being on the run, of having the police try to catch him–and fail–awoke something especially monstrous within him even by the standards of sociopathy. He became megalomaniacal. The first superhuman had become the first supervillain.

 

Kemp rejected Griffin’s offer, and if help wasn’t waiting in the other room that would have been the end of Kemp. Griffin fled, vowing that Kemp would be the first death in the reign of “Invisible Man the 1st.” What followed was a manhunt the likes of which the world had never seen. Kemp worked with authorities to trap Griffin, even offering himself as bait, but it was Griffin who took the initiative. Killing his way past policemen placed around Kemp’s home, Griffin attacked Kemp who fled to town. If he Griffin hadn’t been a megalomaniac, he likely would have backed off upon seeing the crowd of civilians gathering to help Kemp as he tightened his hands around his throat, but all of his highly intelligent mind was bent to the brutal task of strangulation, and it wasn’t until the crowd started beating him to death that he realized what a mistake he made.

 

Kemp, true to his profession as a doctor, took mercy on Griffin and tried to get the mob to relent. But it was too late. First the blood became visible, and then the body.

 

Griffin, who proudly proclaimed himself “Invisible Man the First” was “Invisible Man the First and Last.”

 

Or so it seemed.

 

Griffin barely survived his beating, but survived he did. His invisibility came back to him while in the morgue and he made an easy escape. He learned that the invisibility granting radiation was generated and stored in blood cells. He bled enough from his attack to temporarily disable his invisibility, but over time as his body produced more blood cells his invisibility returned.

 

One dead coroner later and Griffin was a free man.

 

He no longer wanted to kill Kemp. As far as he was concerned, Kemp’s act of kindness had squared things between them. He also no longer wanted to lead a reign of terror. He learned the hard way that he had his limits. He would continue to indulge himself, but he would indulge himself with more discretion. He wouldn’t try and recruit confederates. He wouldn’t announce his intentions. He wouldn’t leave threatening letters. He wouldn’t try to fight society. He had tried that and nearly died from it. Instead, he would live beneath society and take his frustrations out on those that would not be missed.

 

Prostitutes became his favored prey.

 

In our world, 1888 was the year that the enigmatic Jack the Ripper struck London. In Willow-Wells, it was 1898.

 

Meanwhile, the British government had learned that Griffin’s notes had fallen into the hands of a tramp by the name of Thomas Marvel. Marvel was paid a king’s ransom for the notes, and the government tasked her finest minds with taking apart Griffin’s notes just as they had taken apart tripod salvage and the bloody remains of Moreau’s island. It took them some time. Parts of the notes were missing or illegible, and Griffin had written the rest under a cipher, but by 1900 the government had their own invisible man serum and by 1902 they had an improvement on the serum.

 

This second generation, highly trained, highly regimented, became known as Frogs for the whistles they used to communicate. Claude’s photo-sense is able to detect invisible objects, but the photo-sense of the Frogs only allowed them to see as if they had eyes. They could see, but they couldn’t see each other. Thus came the need for audible communication.

 

Frogs were able to extend the counter-visible spectrum radiation produced by their body to about three yards. Their bodies were not only invisible, but so were their clothes and rifles, and this improvement allowed the British empire to comfortably keep its position as world power throughout the Boom Years.

 

The Boom Years refers to the period between 1904 and 1924, between the discovery of the alkaloid herakleophorbia IV, popularly known as “Boom Food” by doctors Bensington and Redwood, and the Redwood War waged by Redwood’s son and Antaeus’ father, the first Emperor Redwood. The Boom Years saw the transformation of the planet’s ecology by the alkaloid miracle herakleophorbia IV, the Willow-Wells version of the Danner alkaloid Dr. Abednego Danner created and administered to his son Hugo, creating a superhuman that virtually won the Great War in the Air for the allies. But while the Danner alkaloid created men with superstrength, herakleophorbia IV created giants, and what was more, it seeped into the ecosystem. Cities became massive fortresses to protect the population from giant wildlife. Rural farms were harvested by enormous machines watched over by artillery. And men became Giants. It was a time of great instability, but the British Empire managed to stay atop the world through use of the Frogs.

 

Frogs were the perfect assassins, be it against Giants or “Littles” as common men untouched by herakleophorbia IV came to be known. They were also useful in kidnapping important personnel, be they captains of industry or foreign warhawks. Just one touch and a Frog could expand his zone of invisibility over a target to make them both invisible. Just one touch, and their target would be gone But it was in sabotage that Frogs truly excelled. One Frog armed with remote explosives could wire an entire factory or military base to explode. Just one man could reliably and covertly inflict critical costs on rival nations.

 

And though there were no open conflicts between nations during the Boom Years, the British Government projected that in open war, invisible soldiers armed with invisible weapons conducting maneuvers that couldn’t be observed through spyglass or balloon would be unstoppable.

 

The existence of the Frogs enraged Dr. Griffin. He was the Invisible Man. He would not suffer to be an invisible man, and an invisible man with worse powers at that. He spent the Boom Years hunting down Frogs. He knew from his close call with death that the key to invisibility was in the blood. He could find out what they did to improve on his formula if he just had enough blood to look at–and while he had to go slow and careful hunting Frogs during the Boom Years, the Redwood War provided him with enough chaos and confusion to hunt to his heart’s content.

 

It was the unshakeable belief that England’s invisible armies were invincible that gave Prime Minister Jack “the Giant killer” Caterham the courage to pass legislation forbidding the breeding of Giants in 1924, which led to a very brief and very decisive war that resolved in the Giants’ favor. Jack believed that Frogs armed with syringe-swords would fall on the giants like invisible mosquitoes. He drew comparisons to Talos dying to Jason. But it didn’t go as he planned. He bought into his own stereotype that the Giants were all brawn, no brains. It wasn’t long before they cracked the invisible man formula and created their own invisible men–except these invisible men were giants.

 

Redwood Empire was the supreme power of the planet by 1920 and the Frogs became their invisible police force. Think of an invisible mountain watching, always watching. Scary, right? Meanwhile, Dr. Griffin was putting the finishing touches on something even better than a reproduction of the government’s second generation invisible man serum–an all-new, third generation serum.

 

This third generation would have several advantages over the second. The third would have a larger radiation field extending as far as they could see. They would also be able to detect invisibility through an improved photo-sense, and what was more, they would be able to restore visibility to the invisible–meaning themselves or others. Griffin often daydreamed of turning scores of Frogs visible and terrorizing them as the one and only Invisible Man. But the slightly more rational side of his brain dwelled upon the final improvement–the third generation would have a radiation field so robust that he would be able to impart invisibility and photo-sense temporarily to anyone they chose. They would be the true masters of the invisible. They would decide who would be invisible and who wouldn’t be.

 

But Dr. Griffin learned well from his close brush with death. He remembered how the first transformation was too much for him to bear, how it surprised him with its difficulties. It broke him. He tried for the longest time to reverse the serum and restore himself to visibility…before he realized that the world was his plaything.

 

He wanted to make sure there would be no surprises. That meant someone else had to be go first with this serum.

 

He wasn’t about to use just anyone as a guinea pig. No. Being the first to sample the new serum, that was an honor, a gift no less than fire from the gods. Dr. Griffin wanted the first third generation Invisible Man to be someone he liked.

 

That proved to be a problem because Dr. Griffin liked very few humans beyond himself.

 

He settled on his old “friend” Dr. Kemp. Kemp tried to save his life, even as he tried to take his. Dr. Kemp tried to save him from the mob as they tore his body apart like wild dogs.

 

Dr. Griffin didn’t believe he owed anyone anything–but even he had to admit that Dr. Kemp was exceedingly nice to him. So he looked up whatever became of Kemp and found he had a family. He found that Kemp’s grandson Claude was training to be a medical student.

It had to be fate. Dr. Griffin was but a student when he became the world’s first Invisible Man.

 

Claude was young and healthy. If there were any unintended side effects, he would surely endure them. And if he didn’t, well, he died in the service of a purpose greater than himself, and wasn’t’ that a great honor?

 

Claude Becomes Invisible

 

Claude, like his father and grandfather before him, was a London medical student. He thought very little of Dr. Griffin throughout his life. A generation of Kemps had gone by without Dr. Griffin making a move against anyone. Dr. Griffin was an interesting story to tell colleagues, a “Yes, my grandfather was the Dr. Kemp” icebreaker at parties. Nothing more.

 

So it came as quite the surprise when, while walking home from class one evening, Claude found a rag of chloroform shoved into his face.

 

When he awoke, it was in the back room of an abandoned store. Around him, strange chemicals and flasks piped a translucent liquid that scintillated when it hit the rays from the one overhead light bulb.

 

He was completely naked.

 

He tried to move, but found that he was strapped by leathers to a chair.

 

That was when a syringe floated up to his arm and stuck him.

 

“I wanted to wait until you were awake.” a voice told him. “It’s less frightening when you’re awake. You don’t wake up and not understand why you’re so cold and being eaten away.”

 

It was a high-pitched, nasally voice. Claude reflected that it wouldn’t have been a very frightening voice if it only had a face to go along with it.

 

When the serum finished reprogramming his blood cells, when the transformation started, there wasn’t any pain, though Claude anticipated it. He just felt cold. All the warm light passed through his body.

 

The voice hm’ed and ah’ed over his body as it faded away. He was very interested in what happened to Claude’s body.

 

The worst part was when the skin peeled away to show the muscles fearfully contracting with every panicked breath. He didn’t look human, and he couldn’t look away. His eyes were invisible. His “photo-senses” activated, and for the first few moments it was horrible because he could see all that he was–or rather, all that he was not. But then his photo-sense kicked in and he saw everything as if it were a dream, as if he were a camera in a movie. He saw himself, which was growing progressively less. He saw the chair. He saw the laboratory. He could not see his captor. It was horrifying, but it allowed him to dissociate from the reality of his plight.

 

“It got better when there were only pieces left.” Claude would say reflecting on his ordeal. “Eventually there came a point where it wasn’t me losing parts of myself, it was me gaining parts of myself, everything fading into the invisible mass that was me. And then that was it. I was an invisible man, like him, like the Frogs. It’s strange. While we’re invisible, we have a photo-sense that allows us to see even though our eyeballs don’t absorb light. It lets us see through walls. But it can’t let us see ourselves. It’s got something to do with the brain’s mental mapping of the self. My body knows it’s invisible, and so it tells my brain that it’s invisible.”

 

Claude screamed out a lot of questions. The voice ignored every last one. Instead of answering Claude, he asked himself questions.

 

“I wonder if you’re a Frog or not? Frogs can’t see each other. That’s why they whistle. But you should be more than a Frog.. Here, look at me! Focus on me!”

 

Claude followed the voice, but only saw a quiet laboratory.

 

“No? No. Damn you, look at me! I know you can! Try!”

 

Claude tried. He wished with all his might to give the voice a body. He was afraid of what might happen to him if he couldn’t.

 

And then, right in front of him, was a body to go with the voice–if it could be called a body. It was like a collection of street lamp halos seen from a rain splattered window all mashed together into the suggestion of a man’s shape.

 

Claude couldn’t make out the features of his face, but he could tell by his tone that he was grinning.

 

“You’re not a Frog!” the colored shadow said. “You’re nothing like a Frog! You’re so much better! Why I bet you could pick them out in a crowded street and then one by one bash their brains! Oh don’t be scared. I can tell you’re scared. Your eyes are so scared. I know I must look a fright. But remember that all men fear what they can’t see, and only cowards fear what they can. You aren’t a coward, are you?”

He laughed.

 

 “Here, look, there’s more you should be able to do!.” The glowing shadow wheeled Claude to a window. “Make it vanish. Make it all vanish.”

 

Claude thought he meant the window. He knew that Frogs could make things near their person vanish. He made it vanish, but then the colored shadow shook the chair and barked about how he meant all of it. The buildings. Everything. Now.

 

Claude didn’t think he could do it, but he did. The houses, the street lamps, the watchtowers, they all vanished. He could see all the way to the ocean.

 

Then, not caring for his safety, only caring for the chance to strike back at the old enemy of his family, he turned that power against him. He made the Invisible Man visible.

 

Revealed as a wrinkled, white rat, Dr. Griffin ran screaming from the room.

 

Claude was sure that the doctor would return with a gun and take revenge. He didn’t care. He wouldn’t comply with whatever twisted plans he had. So he waited, and it was a comfortable wait. He saw how little there was to the man without his invisibility. He was pathetic, no matter what he would do to him.

He waited, and waited, and eventually he had to fall asleep.

 

When he awoke later on a street corner clad in only a blanket, he knew he had gotten the better of Dr. Griffin. The old psychopath was too scared to approach him while he was awake.

 

He wondered if perhaps, the doctor had somehow taken away his powers. But he knew he did not as he made his hand blink out of existence, and then saw that he could see it as a smear of colors.

 

Dr. Griffin never made Claude’s family regret trying to save his life. No matter how evil he was, he never made them regret living life by primum nil nocere.

 

But Claude was determined to make Dr. Griffin regret leaving him alive.

 

Claude and Ant’s Rebellion

 

The Kemps never cared much for politics. They were dedicated doctors. They treated good men and bad men, Littles and Giants, and who ran the world affected little of the surgery room which was their domain. But with his new powers, Claude couldn’t ignore the Rebellion. He couldn’t watch like others while the Rebellion skirmished with Frogs and Imperial soldiers, not when he could help, not when it was so easy to help. When all he had to do was will people within his field of vision to vanish, he had no excuse but to get involved.

 

Claude was the Rebellion’s guardian angel in London. The Empire assumed that the Rebellion had yet another unexpected superweapon to go with their massive floating Poseidon base while the Rebellion searched for their invisible protector. They couldn’t find him. When Claude met Antaeus only when he was ready to join.

 

Claude’s decision to join the Rebellion involved a lot of hand-wringing and soul-searching. He knew he could do more for them as a member. He could plan with them. He could lead invisible operations. He could take the Rebellion’s uncertain struggles and transform them into decisive victories. But that meant going against how he was raised. The Rebellion and the Imperials tried to limit their bloodshed. Antaeus, after all, was the Emperor’s son. But deaths did occur for both sides. This wasn’t a game they were playing.

 

He would be participating in murder if he got involved. It was the kind of murder a soldier commits, but it was still murder, and it was blasphemous for the son of a doctor’s son.

 

But he couldn’t deny the Rebellion was fighting for a cause that was great and good, a cause that would change the entire world for the better if Antaeus succeeded in taking the throne. Beastfolk were not the “biological constructs” the Imperial government promised, they were not near-mindless servants. People believed that the open letters signed by someone claiming to be a female Beastfolk named Atalanta which argued for Beastfolk humanity were actually written by humans, but Claude knew better. He had seen them while invisible. He studied them. They never spoke, and only communicated with each other through throaty growls and grunts, and because of that Claude wondered if they might actually be the simple brutes the government said they were. But then he saw one of them, a female by her size and build even though she was dressed in a shirt and overalls like a man, reading a book. When she placed it down, he took a look at it. It was a medical book, and earmarked pages detailed the vocal cords.

 

That was when Claude understood why they didn’t talk. Their creators wanted them to seem far less intelligent than they were.

 

Claude knew the Rebellion was for the good of humanity. Mankind could not hold other sapients in bondage like animals even if they had beastial appearances. Liberating the Beastfolk would save the souls of two races. And Claude knew he had the power to help the Rebellion place their aims well beyond doubt. But to become a soldier, to facilitate the deaths of those whose only crime was being on the wrong side, he had to abandon his father and grandfather as models for how to live his life.

 

Inspired by Antaeus’ obsession with Classical mythology, Claude turned to Arthurian myth. He would be a knight as gallant as any that sat at the round table. He would take life, but do so honorably and with a clean conscience.

 

He approached the Beastfolk girl he encountered earlier and learned from her that her name was Atalanta. She was the one that wrote the letters! Atalanta escorted Claude to Poseidon where he met Antaeus, his Arthur, face-to-face.

 

Claude would aid the Rebellion until Willow visited his world bringing Martin’s teachers with her. The teachers were able to expose Minister Denali as the secret, corrupt power behind the throne and orchestrate a peaceful transition of power between Redwood senior and his son. But his knightly duties are not at an end. When he vowed to serve Antaeus like a knight, the vow didn’t have an expiration date. He has accompanied Atalanta to our universe not only to aid her as she learns about our world as her Earth’s first Minister of Multiversal Affairs but to train and become stronger. 

For a knight, there are always other battles to prepare for.

 

Behavior

 

Exemplary 

 

One doesn’t typically maintain a sunny disposition after a life as a young soldier, nearly a child soldier, so it’s all the more remarkable that Claude is so jovial and optimistic. Part of his optimism is his natural personality, but part of it stems from a sense of obligation to the Rebellion. While Claude’s powers were invaluable to the Rebellion, they meant he was far more useful standing away from danger and dropping people and objects into and out of invisibility than in the field facing danger with the others. No one ever looked down on Claude for his powers, but he felt cowardly and resolved that he would try and support those that did fight as much as he was able to and that included lifting their spirits. Antaeus couldn’t have picked a better person to accompany Lanty to our world. The pensive, sober aspects of her personality even out in his presence.

 

Back in his world, Claude was a fan of science fiction, or as its known in his world, scientific romance. Our world is like a giant toybox to him. Where Lanty feels intimidated by our technology, Claude feels invigorated. He sees the good of what technology can do before the bad. When you talk to him about nanite therapy, his mind doesn’t go to how nanites can be used to assassinate people by forming blood clots, his mind goes to how nanites can be used to break up naturally-forming clots. That’s just how Claude is. Some people may say he’s a naïve little boy from an underdeveloped world, but I think what he actually is is insightful. He sees right through fear and apprehension and straight to the wonder that is human potential. He’s got the Martin’s spirit.

 

Claude’s life hit a turning point when he decided to go beyond assisting Antaeus’ Rebellion as an invisible guardian angel and join the rebellion as a member. All his life his father had prepared him to become a doctor, to become a healer whose first vow was primum nil nocere, a vow no soldier can uphold. His grandfather was famous for showing mercy to even a wicked man, a man who had tried to murder him. Claude knew that for the man he wanted to become, he had to look for a model outside his lineage.

 

 He couldn’t turn to history. The Giants’ war against smaller humanity began defensively, but it ended with global suppression and, ironically enough, limited reproduction rights for Giants. The British Government under PM Jack “The Giant Killer” 

 

He couldn’t find his model in history, but he could from legend. He modeled himself off the legendary knights of Arthurian myth.

 

Claude knows quite a bit about Arthuriana. He was the one who introduced Lanty to Monmouth and Malory and the pair were ecstatic to discover TH White from Elaine Crow. Elaine loaned them her well-worn copy of The Once and Future King, the one she keeps by her cockpit on the Excalibur 9.

 

Claude strives to be as honorable, humble, and chaste as Galahad and Percival. He never breaks his word, and as one can tell from the great amount of soul-searching and moralizing that went into his decision to join the Rebellion, cares greatly for his personal honor and integrity. He’s very humble, and that humility helped soften the blow of going from one of the most powerful beings on his planet to a kid taking remedial classes.

 

His humility, along with his optimism, has allowed him to integrate within our world much easier than Lanty who is constantly comparing herself and her world negatively to our own. It’s very refreshing to see how things we take for granted like the noosphere and interway are elevated to wonders in his eyes. Our world is a world of wonders, it’s just hard for us to see it sometimes.

 

Claude is also very chaste, which has caused him to be uncomfortable around some of the female students. He’s from a very conservative culture. His world has yet to discover the bikini. He walks on the boardwalk and hides his face when he sees the sunbathers. Superheroine costumes are things he wouldn’t dare to dream about. Even short skirts and midriffs are things he feels dirty looking at.

 

All in all, Claude is a great addition to our student body. He provides a refreshing outsider perspective while being willing to conform to our culture and expectations. He’s great as Lanty’s helper, but I’m looking forward to seeing what the Invisible Knight can do on his own.

 

Appearance:

 

Claude used to dress in a functional shirt and overalls, much like Lanty, and often with a coat because he got cold on missions that didn’t bother Lanty and other liberated Beastfolk. But now that Antaeus is on the throne and the Rebellion is the Empire, he wears an officer’s uniform.

 

Under Antaeus’s father, the Redwood Empire allowed Littles into their military, but only to the rank of sergeant. With Antaeus on the throne, Littles can now hold any position in the military. While Claude is technically unaffiliated with the military, as an Imperial Knight he effectively has the rank of a general and can order around Imperial troops. 

 

One day, he’s one of the Empire’s most wanted criminals, the next he’s one of the most powerful men in the Empire. Such is life.

 

Claude’s coat is the coat of a Giant general scaled down for a Little. It doesn’t have any medals or insignia yet. Antaeus wants to shower his old friend with accolades and decorate him like a Christmas tree, but he hasn’t thought up all the awards yet. He’s got a lot of ideas. Claude for his part couldn’t care less. His sword has always been his badge. 

 

Speaking of which, he still has his old sword. He made it himself from spare metal collected around the Rebellion’s Poseidon base. But it’s been reforged into a perkunite alloy that gives it an edge that won’t dull. His old LeMat has been retired and replaced by one from Urban Ranger’s arsenal–one equipped with an extradimensional magazine meaning that it’ll never jam and never run out of ammo. Urban Ranger says it’s an ideal weapon for a nascent gunslinger (because when you’re starting out, you want as many chances to hit the target as you can get) and that he’ll gift Claude stronger (and weirder) firearms as he develops in skill.