The Greater Good

Intro and lore

Catherine was the perfect woman for him, also an undiagnosed psychopath but her way of life relied less on the charismatic side. Though she could charm her way through anything, she didn't. Instead, she mostly kept to herself and interacted with other people when she had something to gain from it. She was a rather tall woman with extremely long bleach platinum white hair and an extremely "its-not-a-phase-mom" gothic style, from her heavy eyeliner to her fashion choices it was clear she was trying to be unapproachable. That didn't stop Darron from making his move on her though, which successfully landed him the attention of Catherine, who luckily enough, was also capable of feeling her own version of the obsessive love Darron seemed to have acquired at first sight of her. Together the two of them rapidly married each other and began planning their dream futures together, hoping to have two future children, both boys named Evan and Andrew. When Cathy fell pregnant for the first time, they were hesitant to get their hopes up since they planned to abort the child if it wasn't a male in order to fulfil their dream family, but were filled with pride and excitement to learn that their first-born child would be a male, whom they would name Evan.

Evan was born as a healthy dark haired emerald green eyed baby boy, quickly growing into a spoiled and overly aggressive baby and toddler. Facing little to no disciplinary actions from either of his parents while growing up lead Evan to develop his lifelong explosive anger problem whenever he doesn't get his way.

Lastly in the family is Andi, an accidental baby girl that managed to slip under the radar of the Ray parents due to Evans aforementioned hostile streak. Andi was hated by her family for being the wrong gender but also because she was the weird and odd-one-out in the family, being born with a dirty-strawberry-blonde hair color that was much lighter than the rest of the Ray's, and the proud family emerald eyes were dulled by a hazel-brown. Although seen as a mentally handicapped and socially inept mute, Andi was a perfectly healthy and capable girl; not only was she able to speak, converse, and learn like anyone else, but she loved to do so despite being heavily discouraged by her family. Overall, the needlessly cruel mistreatment she would receive from her family would lead the girl to grow with a false idea of how the world and reality worked.

It wasn't just the people the public eye had the wrong idea of, but the ray family business as well. The rumors about the Ray Pharmaceuticals weren't as false as everybody had hoped either, in fact they were entirely true.

Dr Darron Ray's journey towards his creation of immortalizing and death-defying chemicals came shortly after, and some say because of, the death of his late wife Catherine Ray, who tragically lost her life due to several preventable complications during the birth of their second child. While Dr. Darron Ray was more than capable of handling these complications himself, the sheer amount of them that occurred at once coupled with the lack of any of his equipment at the time ultimately equated to fighting a losing battle of a life for a life. If he had any say in the matter, he would have chosen his wife Catherine, but the universe had other plans, and instead left him as the sole parent of two children.

On that fateful day, the Ray's found themselves seeking shelter from the law in an old abandoned factory miles away from their home. But why was the law after them? The law had come looking for Cathy after she heavily incriminated herself while coving up a manslaughter committed by her first-born child, little 3-and-a-half-year-old Evan. Evan had always been a rather angry and violent child, however nobody expected his violent outbursts would have such a devastating consequence at such a young age. During a play date at Evans house between him and a friend, an argument occurred over a toy the two of them both wanted to play with, the resulting fight lead the boys out of Evans room, where Evan ended up pushing his friend down the flight of stairs in their home, the child did not survive.

At the time of the incident, Darron pharmaceuticals were not perfected, nor had he even announced them to the family, so when Cathy discovered the murder scene, she did what she thought any mother would do, she protected her son and covered up the crime, reporting the child missing and burying the body in some woods many miles away. The cover up was sudden and not well thought out at all, so when the police discovered the boy's body in the woods, they were also able to find DNA evidence from Cathy at the grave site, making her a prime suspect.

Darron was a very rich man, and immediately began the process of simply 'paying off' the officials in charge of Cathy's wanted status, however with every one he paid off, more were hearing about the cover up, resulting in more people needing to be paid off. Because of this the Ray family including a heavily pregnant Cathy had to flee their home and go into hiding while Darron paid off everyone preventing his wife's wanted status from simply fading away. The days turned into weeks which turned into moths and Cathy eventually fell into labor approximately one week before her suspected due date, the labor was complicated and lasted almost 24 hours before little Andi was born. Dr Darron did all he could to keep both mother and child alive but the birth of Andi proved to be fatal, resulting in them only being together for 33 minutes before Cathy was pronounced dead by her husband.

After weeks into the manhunt for Cathy the police were led to the abandoned factory of Andi's birth, where they arrived to a deceased Cathy, a grief-stricken Dr. Darron Ray, a quiet 4-year-old Evan, and a new born baby girl. It might have just been the grief of losing his wife but Darron took note of how little he felt for the new born child. After the birth of his son, he felt a selfish pride but this daughter of his did not bring about the same feeling, in fact, she brought about no strong feelings of any kind.

Due to the nature of the situation, at least through the perspective of the police, the criminal they wanted was dead and so the warrant for their arrest was void, but they intervened simply to help escort the family back to their home and help lay the family's mother to rest respectfully.

While Darron felt no connection to the newborn baby girl, he took her home to avoid getting any more police attention. Darron eventually named the child Andi as a female replacement for the name Andrew, a name his late wife Catherine had always admired and wanted to use. Ever since then, Andi's survival has been based purely on luck, and the occasional generosity of complete strangers.

During the first several months of Andi's life the family just so happen to have hired a babysitter for Evan who had recently given birth, she was able to provide and bottle spare breast milk to feed to Andi while she was at their residence working. Other than the occasional care of babysitters, Andi was mainly left isolated as an infant, and while a lack of an environment and stimulation seems neglectfully cruel, it also came with a complete lack of danger and threat. There were no toxins to accidentally ingest, or inedible objects to choke on, and so Andi simply continued to survive. Every diaper rash healed, every dehydration encounter was eventually quenched, every hunger eventually fed all due to several baby sitters over the course of one or two years. 

After the daughter of his continued to exist despite his neglect, Darron decided he will just put up with the girl and find some sort of use for her, after all he felt no pride or desire to develop this child into a functioning member of society but maybe she could benefit him in some way. Just as Andi began talking and understanding conversation, her father began to pay her a visits while she was confined in her in her room, spending months upon months just talking to the child while planting little seeds of manipulation.

He explained why the girl was locked up, blaming the whole set up on safety. He explained how the world outside of her family was dangerous, and horribly scary, how men are held in much higher regard than women and that young girls all over the world were living just like Andi, starting their intense training in how to be a useful and helpful girl, he would tell her about other families who killed their female children that disobeyed or weren't good enough. Darron explained how this was so common and widely accepted that anyone that witnessed Andi misbehaving would immediately start pestering her father to terminate her for being "out of control". He taught Andi to be silent around non family members at all times, and that untrained females are always forbidden to speak outside of their family.

Andi quickly grew fond of her father and his stories of the outside world, all of which was a welcome distraction from the haunting isolation. She became so comfortable and pleased to see her father that she began pleading to go with him anytime he would leave. It was after weeks of this pleading that he began to teasing the idea of her being allowed out of her isolating room and allowed to somewhat free-roam the house IF she was able to behave and follow an order properly, which he did not believe she could do. Weeks more of little Andi pleading her heart out to her father eventually lead to her begging for the opportunity to prove it to him by following an order, any order, but her Father would have an excuse such as "I can't think of any" or "I don't need anything doing right now" every time the girl asked, dismissing her complaints whenever she tried to debate her father into making any pointless order for her to follow until one day she simply stopped asking and seemed to fall into a brief depression, no longer happy to see her father or interested in the stories of outside, which is where our story will begin.