ORIGIN 2: World Enders

Ato's Sojourn

Meanwhile, Ato was on a small ship headed to Volcrim with four members of TRU. Everybody on the ship was nervous about returning to Volcrim. Since the vanquishing of the Star Brigade and Origin Project's rise to power, Volcrim hadn't seen much change, if any. It was rumored that The Laughing Shadow had returned to the moon to hide from Origin Project bounty hunters who were supposedly on the hunt for him. Much like that rumor, which was propagated around Volcrim's territories, the news of Laughing Shadow being Ato's great-grandfather and Vander Horeme's uncle was still spreading.

After methodically navigating through a couple of space battles around the moon, the ship finally landed on Volcrim. As soon as it did, it was immediately surrounded by dirty children begging for food and something valuable to sell in the slums of Kalapane, which was the territory in which Ato grew up. As Ato and his men exited the ship, a gang of children were waiting to rob them at knifepoint, but they backed down when they saw Ato put his hand on his laser blaster. Ato and his men had on gas masks. They spent so much time away from the moon that they were no longer immune to its pollution.

They toured the streets for a while and were treated like celebrities everywhere they showed up. The members of TRU, especially Ato, were urban legends in the flesh to the young ones who knew the stories about how they joined the Origin Project. As they walked the slummy streets filled with trash, wild dogs, and tattooed gang hordes, certain sights and sounds brought certain memories back to them. As large packs of kids as young as six raced by on hoverbikes, they remembered the days of the Wolfpack.

Back in those days, no one could afford to build a hoverbike initially. They had to settle for two wheels until they could collect all the right parts in Volcrim's chop shop barter system, which still booms to this day. The streets of Kalapane were just one territory out of many on Volcrim. "Kalapane" meant "children of war" in the Volcrimese tongue. Since the whole moon was governed by outlaws and exiles, Volcrim didn't have police or a conventional law system.

When they were young, Ato and his older sister, Akira, had to learn the street code quickly. After the death of their unknown parents, who were outlaws exiled from Solara, they had to raise themselves in Kalapane and take care of each other. Ato formed the Wolfpack at the age of seven.

Ato, along with Oasis and Zenith, believed that the female child of Akira carried prior to her death possibly survived and is still living today. If so, she would be around 24 years old and Akira would have been around  50 now.

Ato remembered the very day his old sensei, Shimoto, recruited him, Akira, and the Wolfpack to the Shinobi Nobles' slave market. The members of TRU were the latest generation to practice the potion arts and noble fist off the moon. They took pieces of the Shinobi Nobles' culture and popularized it among Origin Project's operatives when they formed the Toxic Recon Unit.

As he watched kids race by on hoverbikes, and the wind from the speeding bikes ruffled his hair, Ato recalled customizing his first hoverbike with built-in cannons. He remembered giving his bike that wicked paint job and covering it with dozens of racer stickers with the Wolfpack's emblem, which was a wolf howling at six moons. The Wolfpack raced around the streets in large packs looking for confrontation with the child slaves of other outlaw bands from other territories. They protected the borderlands of the Shinobi Nobles' territory. That was one of the duties the Shinobi Nobles assigned to them.

Ato remembered his first biker war, which broke out between the Wolfpack and another gang called the Raptors. It started in the borderlands and made its way deeper into Kalapane. The two gangs would rev their engines, racing each other through the slums, firing their cannons at each other through the chaotic streets, where the only rule was to never abandon anyone left behind. The Raptors had advanced hover bikes. They were fast and their guns were powerful, but the Wolfpack never lost a street war.