🜄 Viron

Raised in an arid country far from the hustle and bustle of Inkopolis, Viron grew up in a loving family comprised of two scientist parents and a perilously smart older sister. Naturally, this being the perfect learning environment, Viron flourished and blossomed almost immediately into a child supergenius with a mind that surprised even his parents. Delighted with their baby boy's progress, they catapulted him ahead in life by sending him to the finest academy they could find and lavished him in gifts of books and science kits. The seemingly unwavering praise and attention heaped on him deeply embittered his older sister, who felt as though Viron had stolen her thunder out from underneath her. Instead of processing this hurt, she turned it into a bludgeoning chip, becoming more and more frustrated by his achievements as the years went by.

Viron, of course, had no idea.

Sometime after his eighth birthday, the youngest member of the family was born - Mikkos, the final child of Lasos and Imani Mokhtar. Enamoured, Viron threw himself into taking care of his baby brother, delightedly bonding with him and teaching him basic puzzle games that they could enjoy together. Mikkos, too, was shaping up to be a genius; helped along by Viron's gift for teaching, he was rapidly advancing through stages of speech and could shakily match Viron in multiple languages by the age of four. Pasion, feeling once again sidelined, only distilled her frustration and anger towards Viron - Mikkos was, for some reason, exempt. It had reached a point that even Viron had noticed, confused and hurt as to why his sister - his family - was treating him with such bitterness.

Soon enough, Pasion would have a reason to justify her dislike of her brother.

Between Mikkos' fourth and fifth birthday, the family went to the beach to celebrate Viron and Pasion's impending graduations. None of them could have predicted how badly wrong it would go.

When Lasos and Imani drifted away to sort out a minor issue with the family's hotel room, Pasion sent Viron to collect some food for them from a stall a five minute walk away. While she was busy with setting up their refuge from the sand and wrestling with the parasol they had rented from the lifeguards, Mikkos noticed a particularly intricate sandcastle a few metres away and wandered over to investigate.

By the time Pasion and Viron heard their baby brother's scream, it was already too late. The damage had been done. The next few hours passed in a blur; Viron had chased away the older children that had attacked Mikkos, handed him to Pasion - who was bigger and stronger - and hauled ass to the emergency room in a fog of panic. Minutes later they were off to the hospital, Mikkos howling with tears as the ambulance tore through the streets of the beach town. Viron doesn't even remember when his parents showed up; all he knew was that Mikkos had been grievously hurt, and he wasn't there.

The diagnosis they got a day later was grim. The attack had involved Mikkos getting his head shoved into the rough sand of the beach, and in his efforts to escape by transforming some grains had gotten into his eyes and destroyed his corneas and optic nerves. He was blinded. Permanently.

Riddled with guilt and grief, Viron swore to create a surgery that would allow his baby brother - and others blinded by similar means - to see once again. Any dreams he had had before that point were tossed away - plans to enter robotics, prosthetics, AI development, all gone. It was an obsession that would never loosen its grip on him.

Though the trauma of watching his baby brother get so violently injured was, apparently, not enough. Capitalising on Viron's contrition, Pasion blamed him viciously for Mikkos' blindness when out of the earshot of their parents. Wracked with shame, he withdrew into himself, and Pasion took the opportunity to grow closer to Mikkos; alienating Viron further in the process. If he didn't know better he'd say she was trying to replace him. But she'd never do that... right?

After Mikkos recovered enough to travel, Lasos and Imani decided to move the entire family to Inkopolis, the biggest culture hub in the world. There were opportunities for all of them there; Lasos' research would benefit greatly from the world-class facilities there, Imani's jewellery business could flourish, Pasion and Viron would get access to the best schools on the supercontinent, and Mikkos would be able to attend a school that was quite literally designed for him. They moved, and a new chapter of their lives opened.

Though both his parents and Mikkos didn't and still don't blame him, Viron loathed his home life thanks to Pasion's constant presence. As soon as he could, he spent as much time as possible out of the house, and quickly found himself forming a competitive turf war team with some friends he met fooling around on the junior circuit. His reputation in Inkopolis began to grow, and slowly, he found his spark of passion again.

Nowadays, he studies biomedical mechanics with a minor in surgical training, with the goal of studying the construction of nerves in the brain and how those communicate motor signals to different parts of the body to improve prosthetic effectiveness and isolate the proteins that build the optic nerves. And while he keeps it as quiet as he can, he definitely isn't above looking into genetic modification...