User Profile

NAME | Wolfgang Grimmer
SERIES | Monster
AGE | 44 - might be a few years off, but it's a good estimate.
BIRTHDATE | He has no idea - but May 18 is fine.
FACTION | Ex-Sphere

Usually? None. He's just your average journalist. But put him under enough stress - and we're talking huge stress, not just some heavy-paperwork-due-soon stress, we're talking there's-a-gun-at-you-and-your-friends'-head stress - and an alternate personality surfaces, one that's completely different from his usually mild-mannered self. He's dubbed it "The Magnificent Steiner," but it doesn't really have a name. Because what kind of name does mindless violence need? He basically goes berserk, and then you better step back - if you're nearby, he'll probably smash your face in with nothing but his fists. This rage usually doesn't last long - only as long as it takes to kill whoever's been threatening him. But while it does, he's a force to be reckoned with.

You look at him almost any time, and he'll proably be smiling in a sort of spacey, happy way. He's pleasant, mostly - mild, too. If you're a street beggar, he'll give as much as he can offer - if you're a kid being bullied, he'll help you out in a pinch - if you're just a passerby on the streets, he'll give you a mild-mannered half-wave and smile in your general direction. Nice guy, you'll think. A little too tall and lanky to blend into the crowd, but yeah, just a nice guy.

And yet, the irony lays in the fact that this is all learned behavior. Back at the Sphere orphanage, he slowly had his emotions clawed away and all he learned was how to fake them - how to laugh, most of all. Deep down inside, he doesn't fully comprehend human emotions - he can emulate the basic ones, of course, happiness, sadness, disappointment. But anything more complex is out of his reach. That's partly why he's always wearing that smile - it's the easiest to fake.

That's not to say he doesn't have emotions, that he doesn't have compassion, because he does, he knows what's right and wrong. He refuses to overlook what seems wrong, and he certainly knows that what was done to him and the other children of the orphanage was unforgivable. He's a believer in justice - he just isn't sure why, and doesn't know how to think about it.

→ Born, to someone, somewhere. He doesn't remember.
→ When he was seven, or eight, or nine, he was taken in by an orphanage (what had happened to his parents?) directed by the Sphere. He doesn't remember much about that place, other than the moldy beds and the creaky doors and the damp ceilings.
→ But turns out - and now he knows - that place was a school to raise the perfect soldier, the perfect monster. They erased kids' memories, their free will, their emotions.
→ -- but he was considered a failure.
→ When he was 14, he was moved out of that orpahange to a strange town, given a foster family and sent to a weird school - where he was taught the art of being a spy. The art of multiple languages. How to endure torture. How to interrogate, how to get information out of people. How to fake emotions. How to smile.
→ Life as a spy for the Sphere. A fake job as a cover-up. A marriage to a woman he'd met at work, so he wouldn't seen suspicious. A kid. The perfect fake life.
→ Except, not. One day, he entered his son's room and found the child still. Not breathing. He did everything he could, but the child was dead.
→ And his wife screamed at him, "how can you not cry? Are you unable to love?" And she left him soon afterwards.
→ He wasn't sure what sort of emotion - what sort of expression he was supposed to show.
→ And life went on. Work as a journalist-spy went on, and, eventually, when the war ended and most military personnel was dismissed, he went on to work as just a free-lance journalist.
→ Present day.