PATCHWORK

Real name: Andrew Richards
Occupation: Scavenger
Identity: Patchwork's status as a mutant is plain for anyone to see. The fact that he is Andrew Richards is not yet known, even to himself.
Legal status: Citizen of the United States wanted for many counts of murder, but not under his real name.
Other aliases: John Deere
Place of birth: New York
Marital status: Single
Known relatives: Martin & Louise Richards (parents), Penny Richards (sister), George Richards (brother). Patchwork has no memory of these people.
Group affiliation: Morlocks
Base of operations: Formerly Beneath New York City, currently unknown
First appearance: December, 2002
History:

Patchwork was born Andrew Richards. He had a pretty happy childhood, with an older brother and a younger sister. He was the middle child, but wasn't one of those ones who felt left out of the family because of it. The whole family got along well except for the occasional spats typical of families. Among the other values drilled into him by his parents (and one of the few that remain today) was the importance of keeping his word. He tended to get punished more severely when he broke a promise (or was lying while he promised he was telling the truth) than for anything else, and this lesson stuck with him.

He was an average student, not excelling in any area. He joined sports teams, but was never a star. Still, he was well-regarded by his peers, and really got along with everybody, not falling into any one cliques. He graduated, and went on to a state college in a business program. His awareness of being a mutant was slow-going. First, he cut himself shaving. The cut healed up remarkably quickly, but there was a little 'scar' of discolored skin, light green. He thought it was odd, and so did others, but no one really connected it to mutant... it was barely noticeable, in fact, just a small line. The second time was again from shaving, but it was a slightly bigger wound. Instead of healing over a different color, it grew back somewhat scaley with white hairs. He knew something was wrong then, but luckily it was a weekend and he didn't have to go anywhere. He decided to stop shaving, take a few extra days off, and grow a beard, which covered the 'deformity' pretty well. The few white hairs could be excused.

Still, knowing something was wrong, and knowing about mutants, he had to investigate a little. Both cuts healed far too fast without much blood. Taking a knife, he lightly cut cut himself under his arm where it wasn't likely to be seen. It hurt like hell, but it healed back... furred, like some kind of animal. Andrew knew then he was a mutant. He didn't tell anyone, but was very careful from then on not to do anything which was liable to get him hurt.

In late August, before school began again, Andrew was helping his father (who had a wood-shop) guide a sheet of plywood through a table saw. Something he'd done many times before, and, normally, was no trouble. This time, though, it was a freak accident, he slipped on something (some sawdust or something), and fell forward, his hand making contact with the saw and coming clean off. Of course everyone was horrified and rushed into action, wanting to call the hospital. He begged them not to, tears running through his eyes through the pain. They ignored him at first, but when they saw his hand suddenly healing over with a furry stump, in order to stop the bleeding, his brother and sister got the father to hang up. Crying, Andrew admitted he was a mutant. He had no idea how they would react, but he didn't want everyone else to know. They accepted him, and helped him recover, keeping what happened a secret until they could decide what to do. At first, they figured they'd just have to explain the stump, but then, gradually over the next few days, the wound seemed to be growing... he wasn't just healing, he was actually growing a new hand. That helped in some ways (no need to explain his sudden lack of a hand), but hurt in others (as he now had a furred, werewolf like hand which would stand out anywhere). Shaving it didn't seem to work; it grew back too fast, and his skin underneath was an odd color anyway. He considered dropping out of school. Still, given it was only a hand, not even past the wrist, he, with his family's help, decided to make a go of it, wearing gloves at all times and shaving wherever he could. It was hot and uncomfortable, but he could claim he had an unspecified injury and he could usually go almost a week without shaving. He went back to school for the time being.

Home for Thanksgiving break that year, Andrew noticed his sister was upset and not talking much, and jumpy. He talked to her about it in private, knowing something was wrong, and she broke down in tears. She'd been raped by a guy she'd been dating a couple times.

Andrew had probably an understandable reaction to the news. The immediate and sudden urge to rip this man's head off. Calling the police was the next best thing, but before she told him, she made him promise that he wouldn't tell anyone (he thought then that she was just pregnant or something), so that was no longer an option... he'd keep his word, but tried and pleaded with her to call the police herself. She wouldn't... maybe she still had feelings for him that she was having difficulty resolving, but she didn't want him to go to jail.... and even if she recanted her story later, the cops were already looking for him. He was apparently into the drug scene. Andrew already knew a little about this guy, whose name was Ray and, although they'd never met, they knew some of the same people.

Asking around the neighborhood (under the pretext that his sister was looking for him), he managed to find out where Ray was living. It was a dingy apartment in a bad neighborhood that he'd turned into a meth lab and that he was dealing drugs out of. Andrew knocked on the door, posing as a buyer, holding up money to the peephole. Ray, high on his own product and not thinking straight, answered.

When the door was open, Andrew came in swinging, yelling at Ray about his sister. He got in a few good blows, and probably would have accomplished his goals (whatever they were, he wasn't sure at that time whether he was going to kill him or just beat him up and call the cops), but Ray wasn't alone. He had a partner, who grabbed Andrew from behind, and pulled him off. While Andrew dealt with the partner, Ray had time to get his gun. When Andrew knocked the other guy to the ground and turned back to Ray, Ray had it pointed at his head and fired.

The bullet went through Andrew's eye and through much of his brain, causing massive damage before coming out on the other side of the skull. Andrew fell.

The cops weren't alerted because Ray had a silencer. Nobody knew anything had gone on. Andrew was, effectively, dying from a gunshot wound in the head, but his body was desparately working to put himself back together.

Searching him, they discovered his unusual hand, and knew he must be a mutant (they also took his wallet, and tossed it in some out of the way place). Thinking he was dead (or close enough to it), they thought it might be cool to take arm as a souvenier. With a saw, one of them held him while the other proceeded to saw off his arm at the elbow. By this time, enough of his brain had regenerated to leave him at a base functional state, and an animal level of intelligence. Just enough for one brief burst of activity. He kicked backwards on the guy holding him, hitting him in the ground and spinned, grabbing the man with his remaining arm in a headlock. Ray quickly scrambled for his gun, but hy the time he leveled it and began firing, Patchwork was already using the other guy as a human shield. The bullets killed the shield, and a few penetrated to Patchwork, but not enough to do any serious damage. Panicked, Ray fired again and again, emptying the clip, barely aiming.

One of the bullets took out the lights, which put them both at a disadvantage, but Patchwork was running on instinct, and the drug dealers weren't very clear-headed to begin with, and without the gun wasn't much. Dropping the body of the already dead guy, he managed to catch Ray and pounded him with his good hand, again, and again, and again. Not because he was the guy who raped his sister (he was no longer even aware of that fact), but simply from some animalistic rage and instinct that this man had to die. Once Ray was dead, and it was quiet, Patchwork slumped into unconsciousness as he tried to regenerate.

His brain regenerated up to functionality, but he had no memory at yet. At least his face and eye were back before morning, but now different.. he could see heat signatures in the dark. He was also terribly, terribly hungry. Soon he succumbed to the only obvious source of food available... the two dead bodies near him.

Eating them, or most of them, anyway, gave his regenerative abilities the fuel he needed to work on his severed forarm. Instead of a hand, though, he grew a thick, ropy tentacle. Memories were slowly coming back... or rather, being reinvented, based in part on the few fragments he did have. He didn't know where to go, and he was still weak and in a lot of pain, so while he waited he found the TV and turned that on, collapsing on the couch. It played as he was in and out of consciousness, and it subtly shaped his developing memories. He stayed in there for a week, eating the available food until most of the pain was gone and he thought he'd 'regained' all his memories from some kind of amnesia drug. Actually, at this point, his brain and memories weren't finished healing, but would continue inventing new things for much of the next month, but it all worked seamlessly into what was already built that he wasn't aware of them being 'remembered'.

In his fictional life, he was born John Deere (provided via a commercial), in Hollywood. He wasn't horrible, but he was a gooney looking kid, and was often bullied because of this. Even his parents beat on him, just because they could. They were both attractive, and felt he was a disappointment. Other kids picked on him whenever they could, and only stopped when he started fighting back, making them think that picking on him wasn't worth the cost of getting themselves hurt. He was never popular, always an outcast, and did horribly in the school; all the teachers hated him.

He remembers teen years as being mostly lonely, avoiding people where he could, and most of the other kids were afraid of him. He first learned he was different when he cut himself on a broken glass and it healed before his eyes. Years after that, he believes he met and fell in love with a young Britney Spears. She saw past his slightly rough exterior and claimed to fall in lover with the man inside. They spent a lot of time together and, in fact, he got her pregnant. They swore they'd be together always and be true to one another. Unfortunately, she didn't take the vow very seriously, as she discovered he was a mutant. A deranged fan came up them after the show and tried to stab her. He got in the way, and got stabbed several times in the chest before her security team came and pulled him off her. Unfortunately, this was one of those times where when he healed he healed 'odd'. He'd discovered most of the time when he healed, he healed normally, but once in a while he'd get weird skin back and, if he wanted to get back to normal, he had to cut himself again to remove the section of skin. Here, he came back all bumpy and scaley, and Britney, who was tending to his wounds, saw this. He was forced to explain.

She was disgusted, and couldn't handle it, and both called the police on him (claiming he was a stalker too), and aborted the baby. She made sure her entire entourage would back her up on the story, and, being vapid show-business clinger-ons, and their relationship never got out to the media, they did so.

Since he was a mutant, his memories invented the idea that the government took him to jail, but he never got a trial. He thinks he was in a research program experimenting on mutants. Dick Cheney was the head of this organization. It was before he was vice president.

Most of the time Deere was restrained, and they did all sorts of experiments on him, cutting out organs and watching it heal back. Sometimes it healed back normally, but only sometimes it healed back wrong (this is how he rationalizes that he doesn't have patchwork scars in some areas where he remembers surgery). He was given a number: 1010321. Even when he wasn't being experimented on, he recalls being tormented by the guards (Smithers and Lenny) for looking like a freak. He was routinely beaten, and nobody ever intervened.

In this fabricated memory, other mutants were there too. They got killed as often, as soon as Mr Cheney felt they weren't useful anymore. In fact, he recalls Cheney liked to do it himself, often in front of the other prisoners. John Deere witnessed Cheney kill 3 obvious mutants. One was green and had red horns, who he remembers singing.

Another mutant he knows was there had the ability to transform into different animals, and, in Deere's memory, looked an awful lot like Simon MacCorkindale (although he has no idea who that is. A Manimal rerun was one of the things playing that week). He could 'pass for normal' most of the time and decided to work for Cheney personally in helping get new experimental subjects.

One day, Deere believes, he overheard the doctors saying that they had a new chemical formula which would make #1010321's regeneration more erratic, so that it would almost always regenerate freakishly, which would be of more value to their tests. One of them made a joke about him being a 'Patchwork man' after this. They injected him with it, and then cut off his hand. It regenerated as a furry, werewolf like claw. Unfortunately, it also gave that arm super-strength and he was able to break free and then cut his restraints on his other hands. He killed most of the doctors, catching everyone by surprise, and took one of the guards hostage. Unfortunately, Dick Cheney was away on business at this time.

He promised Lenny that if he helped him escape, he wouldn't kill him. Not having much choice in the matter, Lenny agreed. Lenny led Patchwork out, and Patchwork did keep his word just knocking Lenny out. He escaped into the streets, and began a moving cross country trek where he had to hide his 'deformities'. Very often, though, someone found out and persecuted him for it, tried to beat or kill him, or just called the cops. He's not sure how many people he's had to kill on his trek. Nobody would accept him, he knew. He lived by his wits, finally arriving at New York.

He believes he managed to set himself up in a bad part of town, a drug lab, but the dealers didn't need it any more, that he lived there for a while, but, as it turned out, the conspiracy found him. He remembers they sprayed something in his home to make him forget and be docile, but apparently they underestimated him. Instead of bringing him back, they decided to continue experiments on him right there. They cut off one of his arms and injured face and eye, but Deere woke up and attacked and killed them both, using their bodies to fuel his regeneration while he recovered from the gas.

Nearly all of his life prior to the gunshot wound has been replaced by these fictional memories, and now they have caught up with his real situation. He knows he was in the hope of two people who were trying to torture him, just like humans have always tortured him. Which means, as it suddenly hit him, that they probably know where he was. Maybe they didn't report their exact whereabouts, but he couldn't afford to wait around. He took what he could use from the corpses and the building (mostly knives of various sizes, and some clothes) and pushed his way out of the building. It was daylight when he did this, and he attracted a lot of attention. He pulled a gun on people to keep them away. He used his tentacle to pull up a manhole cover, and descended into the depths of the city...

After several weeks in the tunnels, he encountered another mutant, Marrow. Because they were both ugly and hated humans, they surprisingly didn't kill each other, although they came close to trying. Marrow agreed to let him live in her area, figuring at the least they could stand guard together against humans and the like.

Slowly a couple more mutants happened to find their way to the tunnels. In late spring of 2004, Patchwork managed to convince some of them to attack a Britney Spears concert, as he believed she was his ex-girlfriend and wanted to expose her for her lies. He didn't intend to kill her, just confront her and make everyone aware that she had once carried his child, but had an abortion.

When the police came to contain the situation, there was a lot of chaos and many humans died, including Britney herself. Most of the Morlocks escaped, but Patchwork himself was captured... only to be sprung when a transport truck carrying him was attacked by unknown forces.

Height: 6'0" Weight: 155 lbs.
Eyes: One brown, one red
Hair: Mostly black
Unusual physical characteristics: Any part of Patchwork's body that has been removed or damaged has healed back in in a completely different form. As such, he's very unusual. At the point of this writing, he has one red eye (left), a lizardlike patch of skin around that eye. His right arm is an octopus-like tentacle. There are also various patches of other skin types around his body.
Strength level: Patchwork has the normal human strength of a man his age, height, and build who engages in intensive regular exercise. His tentacle arm has the crushing and gripping power akin to constrictor snakes.
Known superhuman powers: Patchwork has an extremely powerful regeneration ability, with one quirk. The tissues which regenerated do not necessarily match the original tissues. Often there is some adapative element at play, the new tissues best fitting the immediate environment, but there is a high degree of random invention. Because this regeneration requires vast amounts of energy, Patchwork can consume almost anything with organic material in it, and draw nourishment from it.
Other abilities: Patchwork knows how to use a gun, and how to find his way about the Morlock Tunnels.
Weapons and paraphernalia: Patchwork keeps a gun on him at all times, and has a collection of knives stolen from various people.
Other notes: None