Kudzu

The busy streets are no place for the faint of heart. Kudzu grew up in a city filled with an abundance of life, magic and dangers, be it violent crime or magic leaking into the real world, altering it. The dainties and humans said that this is what you get when you invite the Fae and their children to share your life, but Kudzu was pretty sure that humanity would have managed to develop similar crime levels all by themselves. The magic - not so much.

He dropped out of school - quite literally, sailing down on his short wings from the fourth floor - when he was sixteen, long after having developed a second life as a hacker in the Mirror Realm. He spent the next years alternating between that AR version of the real world, and the Fae’verse, a full-fledged VR infused by Fae magic and partly driven by it. This magic, combined with enhanced technology, also made it possible to have countless interfaces into the real world.

As Kudzu found out on his hacking adventures, the rumors about fully automated factories connected to the Fae’verse were true, and they were endlessly adapting themselves to patterns created by the players. To what means, he didn’t know yet, but it turned out he was already knowing enough to be in severe danger.

The day he was about to come out to his parents about his nightly hacking runs and what they might have brought upon him, a squad of Minotaurs assaulted their apartment, maiming his father who tried to protect him, and seizing Kudzu and his family, abducting them. Ridden with guilt and fueled with anger, he was brought before the king of the Fae. He would have proudly died angry, but instead he was blackmailed to granting the king a favor, lest he wanted to get his parents killed. A far worse fate if anyone had asked him - owing the Fae a favor was just a magical form of slavery.

Kudzu now had a supervisor, princess Deirdra of the Fae, who seemed to find him not half as loathsome as her father, and made him curse his luck thrice in embarrasment when he found out that she was his Fae’verse crush. They had done whole questlines together, laughing, joking, and flirting. Now both their feelings were quite confused, but Deirdra knew well that she couldn’t show too much sympathy now. She directed Kudzu in his assignment to keep magic leaks at bay and fight their cause in the Fae’verse, and helped him understand the inner workings of the Fae’web.

Whenever he found time, he either checked up on his parents or searched for ways to escape from his deadly contract. His hacking proficiency, combined with what he learned about the Fae, had consequences even the Fae king had not foreseen - Kudzu learnt to travel the real world using the Fae’verse and its magic. That gave him the chance to be in places where nobody would suspect him, and step by step, he discovered secrets around the world.

One being that the Fae king was only king to the Fae in the real world, and they were at war with what they called the Old Fae.

Those were cards Kudzu intended to play at the right time. He just wasn't ok with how it would change things between him and Deirdra - right now, he was sure she would side with her father. Whatever love she had for him, would then be turned to hatred.