Being born into a time of political unrest is something that one never wishes upon a child, but in many cases it happens regardless of the parents wishes. It was under these conditions that Huruma was born. Her family was from a rural region of Kenya, from an almost picturesque village of largely herders and craftspeople. With two siblings before her, she was expected to be the son or daughter to pick up after the older, same gendered child. Asali was the favored daughter, someday destined to be married off in an influential pairing, and Nyatui the favored and first born son. Huruma did not happen to fit into the happy equation after she was born. She was a pale newborn, eyes refusing to open and overall extremely lethargic. For all intensive purposes, the baby didn't seem like she would live past a few weeks. While her parents made arrangements to follow what seemed inevitable, Huruma was in fact just about to make the entire village turn heads-over-feet. When the girl finally did see the world, it was not the happy moment it could have been; her eyes seemed dead at first, but over time it was clear that the baby simply was missing color there. After her eyes became alert and watchful, the child made a one-eighty in terms of health.
Moving like lightning from a sickly little girl to a snippy young toddler, Huruma both frightened and astounded her family and their neighbors. It was much like raising a wild child for her parents; more than once her father thought about letting her loose in the wild, though it was hard to tell if he was joking.
At first it just seemed to be hyperactivity paired with a rather violent attitude, but it soon turned into consciously malicious behavior. She soon developed a sadistic personality from this, often turning on pets, livestock, and people in both physical and mental capacities. Huruma was a smart and sharp child, and even though her family encouraged this fact she remained uncontrollable when she was not behaving out of necessity, and was constantly being punished for a range of things by everyone in the village. Sometimes the girl was punished for simply being there, and looking quite demonic, as she would watch some homes or individuals to the point of stalking them. The only person in her family or the village that seemed to be able to control her was her Grandmother. Her grandmother was a wise and spry old woman by the name of Etana; the woman seemed to be older than dirt to Huruma when they first met, but when Huruma attempted the same trials on her as she always did to everyone else, they were met with sternness and love, but never hate. If Huruma bit, then she would be bitten back; if Huruma was storming, she would be drawn into an embrace rather than into a strike.
Etana, unlike Huruma's parents and siblings, saw the dark, brooding child as something more than simply an oddity; she believed the girl to be sent from the gods to punish the village for its transgressions on the old woman herself. Etana was a religious woman, but she did not harbor a zealous fervor like so many can. When war and foreigners passed during her youth, the village in Kenya did change into something of a missionary's dream. The old ways were unwillingly put aside by many, Etana being one who remained stolid. With foreigners came disease, of course, and Etana could almost laugh at how those that abandoned ways gave out and perished. She did not, but she did look to the gods of death to spare her and her family. In the end, through prayer or otherwise, her son Tsoka and his wife Nafula survived to sire Huruma and her siblings. It was through these ordeals that Etana came to also believe Huruma to be sent from another place to her, and so the old woman taught the girl everything that she would need to know about where she actually came from and why. Huruma was quick to absorb, and even quicker to believe in Etana, and in the old gods. Gaunab was her real father, not this man that gave her blood. Death smiled on the family, spared them, and sent them a small package of retribution in their daughter.
As Huruma grew into a young preteen, she kept herself in check. She got smarter by the day, and more calculating by the night. In the daytime, she was silently obedient. during the night, she became a horror. She was tenfold the monstrous person than during her childhood; manipulation, violence, and maliciousness became an everyday game, and she ruled the night as to make parents warn their little ones to sleep at dusk or else. It was only a matter of time until Gaunab smiled a little too much, and Huruma's games turned into murder. True, she had killed, mutilated and otherwise butchered animals before, but never a man. It was the killing of a man that boiled her blood something spectacular. He was not an important man. Nor a special one. Just a man that happened to be tending to natural callings in the middle of the night. When he was found in the morning, it seemed as if he had been torn to shreds right through the middle. Many blamed it on a wildcat, but many also began to suspect the villainous little Huruma for it. Of course, it happened again, but this time far more messily. The man's family was killed in their home three nights later, blood soaking the stomped earth and the thatched ceiling all the same. While not gored, they were bled completely out by the time morning rolled around. Huruma made the rookie mistake of not washing nor changing what she wore(tiredness, she blamed), and was found in the morning literally red-handed. All she could do was run, in the end. While she thought herself as a messenger of Gaunab, she still feared him and death as any good servant of god might, and instinct was always one of her most powerful suits.
Having not even reached puberty, one might think it hard for a girl to traverse the dirt roads and grasslands westward; it was, for the first few weeks, but soon living as such became second nature to her. Westward was Uganda, and civil war. Huruma caught the tail-end of what was left of Idi Amin's regime, as well as the civil unrest that would follow that man's rule. As a result of this, she was exposed to guerilla warfare beside her living alone in the bush. In the cities, she became one of the many orphaned children roaming the backalleys and the garbage bins; in the outskirts, she was the same wild child she had always been, and plenty able to fend for herself as long as common sense was involved. While she spent time in the cities, she also spent time in the smaller towns. A good deal of the small places near the capital were all heavily influenced by foreign powers, and around a year passed before Huruma was snatched by one of the orphanages. The first thing they did after making her presentable was stick her in a classroom. She was always a smart young person, but the lack of further possibilities growing up gave her little to go by. It was here in the suburban orphanages that she flourished, albeit by herself much of the time. She was already at a level a few years her senior, and being in an educational and boarding system molded her mind like putty, and she absorbed like a sponge. While Huruma remained sometimes violent and ill-tempered, she did learn to control herself there. The more that she controlled herself, the more that she could get from these people, and the more that she could make them look at her with wariness and fear. Whereas her former life was formed around brutality and physical intimidation, the second half of her childhood was spent in developing her mental stature and the means of controlling and influencing others without exactly resorting to physical means. Because of her knack for learning, she was put into some special classes, and eventually was moved to a boarding school near Shagamu, Nigeria. Though she acted the part of calm, creepy schoolgirl, Huruma did in fact keep up her less savory activities when she wanted; she was punished for leaving the school grounds often, but her good grades and sharp mind made them go far easier on her. In her early teenage years, this became more apparent, and more than once there were times when other students would try and get retribution for the unfairness. Suffice to say, they did not last long, nor did they try and do it again. Huruma had not killed for a few years, but she made it silently clear to others that she would not hesitate to do so, and knew exactly the worse ways how. For her middle school years, she kept ahead. The school was already for children with special gifts, and though she did not excel in anything in particular, she seemed to settle in with everything nonetheless. Huruma could have gone onto higher education at a young age, but simply chose instead to learn on her own.
When Huruma reached her sixteenth birthday, everything started to change. At first it was small things, when she watched people in her usual cat-like manner. She could feel them. Their emotions stirred at the edge of her mind, and it was not hard to begin subconsciously and without seeing them—pick out who just got a raise, who just failed a test, who was afraid of an impending ruler, and all manner of flighty emotions. These feelings and subliminal 'voices' quickly began to spiral out of control, and soon began to drive her physically mad once again. Just when she had a firm grasp on her life, everything began to fall apart around her feet. She began to get physically confrontational at first, which escalated into harm very quickly. Broken bones, bloody noses, and once a hacked-off finger led to her being removed from the system and moved onto her own. It was after this fact that Huruma basically converted back to her old, instinctual lifestyle, and set herself up in the capital city of Lagos. The feelings of others imposing upon her person quickly made her apathetic in order for her to concentrate on bigger and better things. This practiced control got lost when she was attacked; the man who had done so got what he wanted, but so did she when she plunged a sharp, rusty metal bar into his vitals. They found him later torn apart, as she always left them, though there were also bitemarks this time. Fear creates feelings of triumph in predatory creatures, and Huruma did not so much lose herself as find herself with feeling his pulsating fear; cannibalism was not something she would call it, just simply the victor's spoils. If it fed her where money couldn't, doubly better.
After the incident, Huruma figured out that she could not only sense emotions of others, but influence them with neither mental nor physical means. She could control emotions, not just sense them. Control them like she wanted, and make them believe what she wanted them to believe. This made her new life much easier, in fact. Fear is a primary tool of control, and Huruma was able to flourish in secret by manipulating emotions on an everyday basis. Eventually, she came to remember that which was taught to her by her grandmother so early on. The gods had to have given her this new ability to make people love and fear her; Gaunab had watched her grow in silence, and in the end chose to reward her for her loyalty and strength. For this, she became extremely more religious, and even in some terms, a zealot for her cause. When her stomach became encumbrous and it was clear that her prey had caused her to be a mother, it drove her mad. She was to become a messenger of god, not a mother. When push came to shove, and the twins were imminent, she scratched herself to shreds before growling and snarling her way into a rural hospital. The twins were fine, and she had injured herself to an extreme for it. Huruma did not want these burdens, and she believed they would find a better life released from that one. The young woman tossed the children on the doorsteps of the same hospital only after attempting to kill them. She was not seen, and escaped the city afterwards with little effort.
(Added 5/10)
Now a wanderer again, and with a new worldview when it came to the aims of others, Huruma set off in the first direction that she faced. It took her north, firstly, towards Morocco and Gibraltar. She may have wandered all the way into Spain if it had not been for a peculiar man. This man was kind to her, and he seemed to know what she was thinking long before she even formed a thought on the matter. At first, she avoided him; but somehow, he managed to bump into her every time and make it seem like a series of delightful coincidences. Joseph Sullivan was insistent and kind, and never rude. Eventually, Huruma gave him a chance- and it paid off immensely. Her ability, until then, was largely off-the-cuff and she had not quite gotten the groove of sensory tricks- what Sullivan taught her was as much as he knew that he could teach her. He was eager- perhaps far too eager. Huruma, as sponges do, absorbed it all. She absorbed it all, and by the time that Joseph realized that she was never the young, abandoned girl that he believed her to be, it was much too late. He would come to stop honing her skills with her, instead making attempts to soothe the heat of her personal fire; this, much like his hand at training her to be a master of her empathy, paid off. Huruma had much to calm after her lack of childhood. Joseph was able to help her move onward, and able to help her begin her new path. He did not remain to find out what that path may have been, returning to his brother and family off the beaten path and allowing Huruma to possess the one little trinket that she may have used to find him again should she need to- a compass- one that never points north.
Joseph Sullivan was exactly who she needed, by-the-by; Huruma set off with a new lease on many things and a sharpening ability that would soon grow to be her claws and teeth. She set off into the African continent, encountering whatever life seemed to throw at her or otherwise pelt her with. Nearly a decade after her time with Sullivan, Huruma's travels found her in central Angola. It was during one of many inner wars, and though she did not join either side, she did not refuse to play a part. It was also the first time that she would meet men of the United States military. A troop of marines, stationed there in Angola. The commander was a man many know and hate, though Huruma quickly grew curious of him and tended to simply appear at the camp- Emile Danko was first impartial to her appearing now and again, though it was when she really began to interfere with the camp that he put his foot down. Or, well, he tried. Huruma was never dissuaded. When push came to shove, Danko and his men would need her there, and be glad for it. Whatever the cause was, the station's nearby town one day erupted in violence like the marines had not seen before; the information on what exactly happened there was classified, but not many marines can forget 'zombies' or having to burn an entire village of innocent people to the ground. Danko could not forget something else entirely- that Huruma saved his life in the line of duty. Even that remains a blur to her, but she will always recall pulling his dead weight up over her shoulder to move him, falling into a heap outside the village, watching it burn while they nursed what wounds they could. After this, the marines were rescinded from Angola and the operation itself was classified- buried. One of Huruma's parting gifts to Emile was her compass. The reason? She hoped that one day that Danko- who was like her in a great many ways- may have use for a man like Joseph- a man to soothe his ills and mend his wounds, to set him on a new path. Whether or not it would happen like that is suspect, but through her haze, Huruma's intentions were noble.
Soon after the incidents of Angola, Huruma would come to blows with a second American institution known collectively amongst themselves as The Company. The occurences in the country were quick to pull eyes, and the words of some of the marines coming out of the mess were suspicious for more than the reason of claiming the undead. The Company sent one of their best for the job; from this Huruma would quickly learn. Benjamin Ryans was already a veteran agent at the time, with a somewhat steady working partner and a new family at home that made his job all the more risky. Huruma knew soon enough that she was being tailed; she did make the mistake of underestimating Ryans, however, and he and his partner cornered her for it. The only way to go was through them, and so she did- Ryans' partner was killed, and the older man sustained some very grievous wounds from the fight that would scar and make sure that he never left his carefulness in his other pants pocket. Huruma spared him so that he would learn from his partner's mistake what he would; her main avenue of doing so, however, was because of Ryans' dedication and belief that he was doing the right thing by capturing people such as her. He believed that he was acting in good faith- and Huruma knew that all too well.
(End Addition)
The undocumented years of Huruma's life consisted of moving all over Africa and the Eastern hemisphere at a steady pace. She became somewhat of a shadowed figure for quite a long time, and during these years she also perfected her god-given abilities. She could control the emotions of others almost effortlessly, and had chosen to specialize in the realms of fear, distress, wrath, hate and similar branches so much that she had found ways of making the mind overload with it; hallucinations, imagery, nightmares, madness, psychosis, and mental instability could potentially be influenced into the minds of victims, which came as the prize of having developed these branches of her ability to such a point. She was always overcome with something of a macabre and creeping sense Schadenfreude in her religiousness and contentment with herself and her abilities. In her mid-thirties, Huruma took her act partially to Europe and Asia, and rather arbitrarily later on, to the Americas. After the bomb went in New York City, it did not take long for her to gravitate there, taking her psychosis and special abilities along for the ride.