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These are three original characters from my story project - currently titled the IN LAK'ECH Mythos (In Lak'Ech A Lak'In is a Yucatec Mayan phrase meaning "I'm another you, you're another me").
The three of them are CUETZPALIN (from the nahuatl "lizard"), a race of humanoid reptile beings native from the realm of AZTLÁN that coexisted with different cultures, civilizations and human & non-human populations of "Anahuac" (how the Earth was known by the people of Aztlán, also a name for the known world to the nahua peoples who inhabited the American Continent) centuries before the Spanish invasion, in the Fifth Sun Era (which started in the 14th Century, and is still our era). Needless to say, the kind of the CUETZPALIN and the culture of AZTLÁN (referred to as "aztec") is prominently featured in IN LAK'ECH, and heavily draws from a diverse source of actual pre-hispanic cosmologies (Maya, Mexica, Inca, among many others). The very division of time into "Sun Eras" is derived from the Mexica Cosmology.

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If you want to know more, read the following, but be warned: there are several SPOILERS and major plot details of IN LAK'ECH:
  In IN LAK'ECH, the Cuetzpalin are quite versatile creatures, who can live symbiotically with other vertebrates. Born as eggs, in their initial life stages after they break from their isolation they're small snake-like creatures (a stage called Tonalcoatl, which is a combination of the nahuatl words for "fate" and "snake"), that within years fully grow to a lizard form, and later, into a bipedal, human-sized Cuetzpalin. The common lifespan of a Cuetzpalin can extend from a century to two or three, as they get older they develop feathers on their backs and the spikes on their arms grow into wings. Some Cuetzpalin choose to cut their tail, and that's no problem, it can grow again. Indeed, they have enhanced regenerative abilities in comparison to most vertebrates, even reptiles, because their blood has considerable quantity of a healing substance called Atl-Tlachinolli (a nahuatl concept that can read either as "sacred water" or "boiling water", and means either "blood" -of any kind of animal, human or non-human, including the Cuetzpalin- or "holy war"). This word also refers to the blood of any other creature, and is only distinguished from Teyoliatl (a combination of the nahuatl words "Teyolia", a vital energy related to the heart, and "Atl", "water") - the green substance which is the real responsible for a Cuetzpalin's regenerative abilities, present in their "Atl-Tlachinolli" - when the later is found on nature, in certain lakes and waterbeds.
The Teyoliatl is originated from the Quinametzin ("giants") and other beings from their lineage (elsewhere called as Jentilak, Leshy, Elves, Alrunas, Kiad-pod, Wamoa-pod, Pabid). They're ancient beings who rivalred the Elemental Gods millennia ago, and whose conflict has ultimately led to the evolution of life across many planets, including AZTLÁN, that's built over the remnants of ancient Quinametzin Cipactli (The Primordial Waters' Crocodile) and Kukulcan (the Feathered Serpent, or a Feathered Serpent, the possible ancestor of all Cuetzpalin). One of such "Elemental Gods", Huitzilopochtli (from the nahuatl "Hummingbird", the God of War, patron of Mexico and Fifth Sun), is also closely tied to the origins of the Cuetzpalin and the Aztec Confederation, which grew to become the ruling corpus of the Aztec Civilization (he's not, however, the only Elemental God involved with Aztlán). The Quinametzin and their fellows are self-sufficient creatures, and that detail may have been what put them on the way of the Elemental Gods and their plans - that varied from populating planets with super-predators to establish sophisticated slave-trading networks across the galaxy - but Huitzilopochtli knew there was more about the Teyoliatl, and from his studies and constant intervention, has molded part of the Cuetzpalin and the civilizations they participated on towards a diversity of militarized, bloodletting, ritual human and non-human sacrificing states.
After a first lifetime, that can end either from old age or in battle, by sustaining more damage than the regenerative processes of a Cuetzpalin's body can afford (and it can shed it's skin like most reptiles, and even regenerate limbs - what means a lot), a Cuetzpalin's nervous system, or rather its main organ -the Tonalcoatl, which stores its memories and generate consciousness- can detach from its body, and slither through nature in search for other vertebrates that can live with it symbiotically. In this stage, the Tonalcoatl develops a telepathical communication with the host (that doesn't have to understand nahuatl) and allows it the ability to transform from its current form into that of a Cuetzpalin (or the closest thing to it, fish not necessarily will grow fingers. It's also prudent to remind that the Cuetzpalin have a wide variety of forms, some of them resemble snakes, others crocodiles, turtles, lizards, they cover most of the reptiles' phenotypes) for a considerable amount of time, or until the host itself endures either the most damage it can take, or a considerable amount of times transformed into a Cuetzpalin. When that happens, the Tonalcoatl, that until then lived in symbiosis, reccurs to a parasitical ethos, and takes over the body and consciousness of the sentient host. In this stage, the Cuetzpalin can still transform itself from a new Cuetzpalin form back into the host's likeness, in some cases completely stealing it's identity. Obviously, this has put the Cuetzpalin in somewhat privileged positions in relation to humans and other vertebrates on both Aztec and Anahuac (Earth) societies, even though individual behavior differ - not all Cuetzpalin would take humans as "ixiptla" (from the nahuatl word meaning "impersonator"). This has also took the human sacrifice policies to a whole new level of population control - human ixiptla could get killed, and their bodies could still become hosts for Tonalcoatl. In the same way, the way a Cuetzpalin sheds its skin may have influenced the usage of skins of human and nonhuman animals as clothing throughout different cultures. The Cuetzpalin are a die-hard species that throughout the latest Sun Eras has been associated to military discipline and prowess, be it through the exploits of the bureaucratic Aztec Confederation or even its earthly incarnations (the Xiuhcoatl Empire in the 3rd Sun Era, the Toltec Confederation, in the 4th Sun Era, or the Mexica Tlahtoloyan in the 5th Sun Era). But there's even more to their kind and their blood than mere survival skills...

During the dawn of the Second Sun Era, or the transition between the first and second ones (some 2900 years b.C), Topakhon, a distant planet from the K Pacha Solar System, has been converted into a self-sufficient, mobile satellite and mass destruction weapon, powered by a domesticated Black Hole which is both it's power source (taking care of its artificial atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and geology) and it's main weapon - against other Solar Systems. The people of Topakhon, in the last years back then, witnessed a proccess of severe modification (something that could be considered, nowadays, an "Automation"), becoming biomechanical and biologically linked to its newest bureaucratic state, a "magocracy" called the ORS OHORELA (from the enochian "Legislation of Darkness"), ruled by the immortal Primordial Dragon Tupaq, Elemental God of Darkness (or rather "Absence of Light", if not of "Phantom Dark Energy" itself), who would be known in Aztlán as Mixcoatl ("Cloud Serpent"), many centuries later adopted as a patron by tribes which controlled the Mexica before their leaders' emancipation, through the foundation of their own empire. The ORS OHORELA was strategically divided into four different "Topakar nations" (Palarokhiel in the Southeast continent, Wary Kayan in the Southwest, Apuqohcan in the Northwest and Xibahpukon in the Northeast), overseen by Tupaq's ministers, the Ta'tal (likely a corrupt form of Teteoh, nahuatl for "gods" or "mysterious, unexplainable ones"). Each Ta'tal mastered a different art of the "Topakar magic" (teleportation, necromancy, creation of illusions, control over darkness, astral embodiment, modification of gravity, isolation, among other things made possible y the effective usage of the Darr hidden element, much later considered the "Philosopher's Stone"). Needless to say, Topakhon's path of destruction escalated into a 12 centuries-lasting intergalactic conflict which approximated distant cultures and led to the colonization of many more planets by life and suffering. But what helped the ORS OHORELA to come into being, or the proccess which modified the Topakar people, their environment, their needs and their planet, was a bloody "Revolution" carried out by alien hybrids reputedly born from Tupaq, creatures made of materialized darkness who also inhabit others' nightmares, the infamous Yana Phuyu (from the quechua "Dark Clouds", also known by the aztecs as Centzonmimixcoa "Four Hundred alike the Cloud Serpent" and by the Mazdaists as Daeva), "shadow demons". These fiends are virtually immune to most weapons, save for a combination of a green mineral named by the Chronpuchians (a kind of bird-like bipedal humanoids), and later the mayans as Yaxchilán (from the yucatec "green stones"elsewhere called serapel, another " hidden element") and either Teyoliatl or a Cuetzpalin's Atl-Tlachinolli. Natural sources of Teyoliatl existed - usually, territories where ancient Quinametzin and related beings used to dwell, before they were hunt almost to extinction - and several of them existed in Aztlán, or even in Anahuac, where Aztec colonies were being set (like the island of Nahui-Atl, part of the Atlantic continent in the northern Atlantic). In truth, this combination wasn't completely necessary - any blade with a Cuetzpalin's blood could be initially harmful to a mimixcoa, and in Aztlán the obsidian element was more commonly used as a weapon rather than the varieties of Yaxchilán - the difference is that if it wasn't Yaxchilán, it would need to be recharged, and Yaxchilán could also store or mimick the properties of more concentrated quantities of Teyoliatl (the greener it looks, the shinier it gets), making it even more corrosive to the materialized darkness. The Aztec Cuetzpalin were the first to realize those properties, and throughout history have been associated with the end of the conflict, which witnessed the destruction of Topakhon and the imprisonment of Mixcoatl & his fellows into the dimension of Absolute Darkness for 3000 years (from 1658 b.C, in the late Second Sun Era, to 1342 a.C, in the early Fifth Sun Era).
Of course, in 3000 years much has changed, and the old stories weren't even remembered by most of the people. The Cuetzpalin who lived in Anahuac at the time didn't even remember who were the Centzonmimixcoa or why they bothered taking humans as ixiptla - they didn't even remember where Aztlán was originally located. The first contact between the Centzonmimixcoa and the Cuetzpalin in that age would happen in the untold war between the Mexica Tlahtoloyan (or Triple Mexica Confederation, nowadays popularly and mistakenly referred to as "Aztec Empire") and the Tahuantinsuyu (from the quechua "Four Regions", a.k.a the Inca Empire), between 1481 and 1493. That has turned the central american jungles into a deadly battleground populated by dragons and necromancers, but would end with the death of the Inca emperor, Tupaq Yupanqui (that name is suspicious, isn't it). That wouldn't be, however, the end of the Centzonmimixcoa - these shadow fiends would hide and wait for the spanish invasion - and as an enhanced version of the Duskoplasm virus (a sentient form of materialized virus that can spread and control over infected beings, it can manifest into victims of bulbonic plague and smallpox) - not only hunt the Cuetzpalin to extinction, but also lead some of their survivors into an underground network of slave-trading, in some 200 years extinguishing all records of their existence. In doing so they were greatly helped by another disease, the christian faith and its institutions, but that's just another detail of what could be perceived as Tupaq's revenge. Tupaq, however, isn't omnipotent, and he had to employ the latest incarnations of past allies of his - the Saqraruna Organization (from the quechua "evil people"), from the K Pacha System. The spanish colonization of americas, the genocide it inflicted for the pursuit of gold, slaves and market, has also been crucial to extinguish sources of Teyoliatl (a substance that can mix with water and many more, but that lose it's properties if exposed to certain conditions. Once abundant in Lake Texcoco, where the city of Tenochtitlán -nowadays Mexico City- was located and built upon, with a proper aqueduct system, it has completely disappeared after the spanish colony's poor management, which led to the almost complete drying out of the Lake). Without Cuetzpalin or Teyoliatl, the Centzonmimixcoa were ready to rule again, and this time, Tupaq & allies planned to transform Anahuac, or the Earth, into "Topakhon II". Still, some of those that helped him had other more petty goals - like the christianization of the indigenous peoples, or the establishment of a global economy, and even the eugenic appetite for controlled, aesthetically motivated genocides.
RETURN OF THE CUETZPALIN
  So, save for one or two hiding individuals, that kept using human hosts as disguises, the Cuetzpalin were extinct from the Earth. Or so their enemies would like to hear. In August 8th 2008, the Tonalcoatl of late Mexican ruler Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, an unnaturally super-fast Cuetzpalin, has found a human host - 14 years old student William Mattoni - to symbiotically live with. Using his new powers, William, who was motivated by the defense of Animal Rights, the pursuit of Animal Liberation, and a no compromise posture of might makes right, has started a series of direct action campaigns, destruction of property, assassination of landlords, business owners and workers related to animal expoitation - meat, dairy, eggs, fishing, pisciculture, animal agriculture, animal testing, fur, beekeeping, animal traffic, hunting and so on - across the American continent, starting in Brazil, and then the world. Also motivated by the struggle for the land and the preservation of indigenous autonomy over the global economy's increasingly imperialistic agenda, William also contacted resisting forces and managed to cause some damage in a lot of other industries & their governmental support - mining, gas, oil, paper, other industries also related to the environmental destruction and which employed slave labor - needless to say, putting on his way private assassins, the military, the police force, all State security and this repressive apparel. And of course, in his lizard form, he adopted a quite excentric identity - that of "a Pre-Columbian, immortal, last of his kind lizardman, the prophesied Cuetzpalin Paynal" (from the nahuatl "Fast Lizard"). No government, no people were safe - he eventually became an enemy of the Republic of Tahuantinsuyu, a modern State named after the Inca Empire. But despite he was a threat never experienced by the people of that generation, he didn't do it alone, nor did he have any intention of taking any kind of leadership over any kind of organization - he just knew where to hit, to make the entire system blow. That surely got the attention of the two other Cuetzpalin who existed at the time, and also of a third, who had his own goals, too (the autonomy of the indigenous peoples of Anahuac), and some times conflicted with Paynal's own. Either way, when they learned they could do more by teaming up against common enemies, in September 2009 they discovered that there were more Mexica-era Cuetzpalin, alive (or at least kept in stasis or cryogenic isolation) and kept by the secret Saqraruna Organization (that despite alien in origin, had already moved most of their bases from K Pacha into underground complex sithin Tahuantinsuyu, and operated under special sub-divisions of its governmental bureaucracy, especially the Council for Advanced Technological, Industrial and Energetic Development). They also found out it wasn't a conspiracy that had the Cuetzpalin hunt down in the planet, even though it could've been motivated by the vengeance of some diehard groups like the Centzonmimixcoa, but a coalition of different forces and common interests, including humans who wanted to rise above some social conditions which the Mexica Cuetzpalin were imposing over them, including traditional enemies of the Mexica - like the Purépecha and the Tlaxcaltecas. They also later found out, through some of these ancient Cuetzpalin they've just liberated, the path back to Aztlán, a portal which linked Anahuac and Aztlán (or rather two - one in the Colombian Jungle, and another on ancient structures in the Zapoteca area, nowadays Oaxaca, plus an interdimensional rift in the North Atlantic ocean, where part of the island of Nahui-Atl has been sucked into centuries before). Tupaq, too, was alive -in the form of the Tahuantinsuyuan republic's controversial national hero, Túpaq Amaru III, who planned to use the resources of the Saqraruna and Tahuantinsuyu to accelerate his plan of converting the Earth and its inhabitants into a new Topakhon. But while Túpaq and the Centzonmimixcoa had nefarious plans for the Earth, so did the Aztec Confederation and the many Cuetzpalin that inhabited it, including the Teteoh which ruled it - their bloodlust would've consumed the lives of many indigenous peoples Paynal and others fought hard to protect all these years, in order to re-stage ancient fights between the Elemental Gods.
In no time, the human hosts would learn most of their Tonalcoatl symbiotes didn't care for their lives, instead, they couldn't help but barely wait for the time to take over their hosts. It was too late, in June 2011, when Axayacatl took over one of them, and restarted his life as the intergalactic mercenary known as "Lacerta", who ironically or not, kept a fortune made by succesful jobs to figures such as the Saqraruna and other related groups. This made William find out that, despite separated from Moctezuma (and somehow still able to transform into the Cuetzpalin Paynal) years ago, if he kept using his powers, he could lose his ability to transform himself back into his original form, in a time he was finishing high school, but was more concerning in surviving, by escaping from international government, police & corporative security forces - as he was linked to international legitimate, despite still criminal acts such as freeing animals and slaves, or destoying property and killing people like slavers, politicians, army leaders, mercenaries and so on. He sought alternative ways to keep using some supernatural power, but in December 21st 2012, while facing another Elemental God related to the colonization of the americas and the project of a global economy, as a matter of survival, he has become Cuetzpalin once again, and was unable to return to his human form. This feathered, winged, dragon-like creature would later be known as the Cuetzpalin NAGUAL (named after a tradition of therianthropy, or shape-shifting in Central America). He didn't regret his decision - the heavy toll and limitations imposed by society over him, also his human conditions only dragged him down, so it sounded a better option to become a super-fast lizardman than relying on bureaucracies and social relations. Still, his life wasn't easy: by living like a non-human animal 24/7, he'd learn what it is to have no rights at the eyes of all people, to fight for food and survival, and to exist in a nature where it's die or be killed, by predation, disease, suffering and death. Still, William knew who his enemies were, and what he had to do, the fight was still far from over, even after years, he was betrayed and broken, but could still fight - against all, against mass society and civilization, and even nature.

A NEW THREAT
The Nagual was one of the few individuals on Earth to know that, after Tupaq's failed attempt to accelerate the transformation of the planet into a mobile mass destruction satellite, and the destruction of one of his labs beneath the Death Valley Desert on Arizona, in May 2010, he's recurred to a B Plan which is bringing an actually finished, fully working mass destruction mobile weapon (a domesticated Black Hole) into Earth - this, he has found after a short expedition to the K Pacha Solar System in December 2010. There was no force on Earth able to stop it, and no force on Earth aware of it's eventual coming, save for an ally of his, who in 2012 went by the name of " Chtonian Triton", another human cursed or blessed with the power of mutating himself at will into another non-human species, and who, like him, had made more enemies than he could count - for the sake of saving some animals from a cycle of misery, and granting them a little dignity and freedom. In 2013, the "Nagual" was approached by a mysterious man, named Juan Matos, who claimed to be a Nagual himself, able to transform into other animals, and who told the young human turned Cuetzpalin that "the Quinametzin (the enemies of the Elemental Gods) wanted the Nagual to save Earth", and that "for ages he looked for him", but "was unable to reach". Because the Cuetzpalin Nagual, William, has been very skeptical, he wouldn't bother listening to Juan and his prophetic sounding words, until actual wooden giants confirmed he had been contacted, and even though there was no prophecy and mysticism involved, the Nagual could be of help to some Quinametzin in advancing their will - the presevation of life on earth, under the circumstances they saw fit, rather than that imposed by one or another Elemental God. And by the second half of 2013, Lapolakh, the God of Fire, who was also known as Xiuhtecuhtli (Fire Lord) in the Xiuhcoatl Empire Era, had means which could accelerate his plan - of transforming Earth into a star-like self-generating energy network, which inhabitants would be reduced to a horde-like, ever-laboring mass, fully-automated, genetically subservient to their leaders. What Lapolakh has seen, for years, as a convenient answer to the problem posed by Tupaq's plans, was as nightmarish as Tupaq's plans themselves, and to prevent both at a time was where the Chthonian came in - this time, the Nagual would infiltrate Lapolakh's spacial complex and destroy it from the inside, while the Chthonian and his ally, Kharon (a dragon who claims to descend from Tupaq), would disable Topakhon Mobile II.
  What neither expected is that in June 2013, Tupaq would be assaulted by an ancient enemy and be hijacked from his supposedly natural condition of God of Darkness, confined in the mortal body of a 53 years old human (technically, 64, but it spent 9 years isolated in the Absolute Darkness, where there's no time or oxydation), and soon enough, some of his associates on Tahuantinsuyu, led by Dr. Howard Fang, would learn about his plans of destruction, and through covert means plan not only his downfall, but also the dismantling of the Tahuantinsuyuan Republic, and the hijacking of its resources by the traitors' actual associates - a rival of the Saqraruna Organization, one of the last remaining Yakuruna species members, stranded on Earth before the destruction of their own homeland by Tupaq and his closest ally, SPECTRO. Fang, in cooperation with key figures inside the UN, while not fully revealing the existence of the Topakhon Mobile II, would leak certain details about the Saqraruna to NATO operatives backed by an old rival, the ABEL Inc (related to the creation of the then defunct Private AXIS Military Academy and the alien, super-powerful and adaptive Alpha-Omega armors). The Nagual found himself stranded into a colonial, terraformed base on Venus, operated by Haijianese (Chinese) personnel allied to Lapolakh and his associates - The Yan Hou Fire Lords, a group of Nine human & non-human individuals, ranging from businessmen and entrepeneurs to immortal, draconian undead parasites, from where they planned to carry out the transformation of Earth. While he struggled towards that end, the Chthonian has mysteriously returned to Earth, and the assailants of Tupaq remained unidentified - they weren't the "Novus Civilizatio" (an international secret society composed of bourgeois men vouching for the development of the "Human Automation"), the "Hebdomad" (a group of seven people bound to seven Amesha Spentas, beings of light or angels originated from Ohrmuz, the Elemental God of Light), the Jötunn Organization (an underground scientifical and slave-trading complex, part of a larger network, but mostly composed of members from the eponymous kind, Frost Giants that have manipulated mass migrations across recent human history, and who are led by Ymir, Elemental God of Frost), not even the CIA, traditional enemies of his. This time, the secret assailants of Tupaq, backed by an ally of his, were the secret APKALLU, led by their master, Enki, the last of the Anunnaki, a kind destroyed by Topakhon Mobile Centuries ago. They would remain in secret, while Enki hijacked Topakhon Mobile II for his own and his associates took the distraction caused by tensioning civil war as an advantage for their goals. With Tupaq's powers, Enki foresaw how the acceleration of the dissipation of all matter in the universe (the Big Rip), caused by the destruction perpetrated by Topakhon Mobile II, could make him omnipotent, so he didn't want to waste that effort. On Earth, that which remained of the Cuetzpalin had different goals, but would all be linked to the secrets concerning those that created not only the Topakhon Mobile II, but also had a hand in developing the Alpha-Omega and thus instigating several conflicts in late human history - the Saqraruna Organization.

"AXAYACATL"
Axayacatl has been a well known Cuetzpalin mercenary (at least in te underground, intergalactic bounty-hunter scene), who has worked for the Saqraruna, the Palarokhian Society (a medieval society of mages originally based in Eurasia, the ones responsible for bringing Tupaq from the dead after 3000 years of confinement) and ultimately it's faces on the surface - the Republic of Tahuantinsuyu, also benefitting the UN, some "sovereign States", and other enterprises, in 2011, when during his return (after a hiatus which started in late 2008) he mined local and collective efforts of organizing anarchist resistance and indigenous autonomy on the Amazonian Forest areas of Brazil and Antisuyu, a region of Tahuantinsuyu (these efforts, by the way, had to do with Paynal). After that, Axayacatl looked forward to expanding his fortune, but also to his own ties to the Jötunn Organization, another client, which has promised him to create better human hosts, while he pursued his own secret agenda of capturing the Tonalcoatl of unnaturally super-powered Cuetzpalin, some like Paynal himself (who has super-speed), who have been identified by the Jötunn across history. By the time, though, most have moved to Aztlán. When Fang betrayed Tahuantinsuyu, and international armies and mercenaries movied into Tahuantinsuyuan borders, Axayacatl was captured in the front lines, and separated from his current host - Brazilian journalist Ian Ribeiro, related to the "autonomist initiatives" commonly referred to as Necoc Yaotl, which isn't an international organization, but a free association of paramilitary anarchism-inspired belligerents, that used to include Cuetzpalin on their ranks between 2010 and 2011 - has been captured by the CIA. After all these years, since 2008, when the first Cuetzpalin became publicly known, and later in 2009, when it claimed to be one of the last of what used to be a larger species, it was the first time a government bureaucratic organ would have its hands on one of them to study over (while the human host has been jailed). The studies, sponsored by the military engineering enterprise ABEL Inc, of course took their interests in regards: Make it a program for creating reptilian super soldiers. The first test subject: FBI agent William Ford Jr , a former officer under the wing of Lana Bridges, the adoptive daughter of ABEL's CEO Joseph, and the current user of the telekinetic NI armor. William volunteered, and because of his own service record, despite his psycho background, allowed to join - among his succesful missions, infiltration and destruction of resistance movements across america. He'd ne usually referred to as Project: Agent Saurus, but because all other known Cuetzpalin had their identities made up from some Pre-hispanic, mostly nahua background stories (Paynal, Montezuma, Omepaynal, Cuauhtemoc, Axayacatl), William has made use of the same source, claiming to be ATLACATL, the hero of the Pipiltin (a nahua people associated to the Mexica, they're regarded as ancestors to the El Salvadoran people. Atlacatl has also been the name of a death squad backed by CIA and private military agencies operating in Central America under imperialist purposes). An official mercenary, the dreadful Amargasaurus-looking Atlacatl is the combination of a cold and psychotic agent and the ancient, traitorous & manipulative Axayacatl. In order to avoid his complete takeover by the Tonalcoatl, William is only allowed to symbiotically fuse with it during missions - and in those he's usually accompanied by a special subdivision of the CIA, that includes Lana, besides Bradley Kyle, the latest user of ALPHA, and Nick McKinley, current user of the MI armor.
The actual Axayacatl has been made prisoner by the CIA, yet another Cuetzpalin roams the Saqraruna's radar sporting the identity of Axayacatl, or alternately, how he's mostly known among the European Palarokhian Society, "LACERTA" (latin for lizard). Yes, in fact he's a bounty hunter and can be hired by anyone paying enough - even though in the latest centuries, these have been either Jötunn or Saqraruna, no one else - but this Lacerta has his own goals, and they're not low: discovering the truth behind the Saqraruna Organization and exposing it to competent forces. The latest "AXAYACATL" is a symbiotic fusion of Douglas Ryder, the Algonquian ex-AXIS (as OMICRON) and ex-Insect Syndicate (as FIREFLY) agent, and the Mexica-era heroic Cuetzpalin liberator Macoel (whose symbiosis with Ryder's childhood friend, Paul Powhatan, has been used by the later under the name of Montezuma). While working for AXIS, Ryder had Howard Fang (who worked for the military institute following his contract with the Ulhaden Corporation, one of AXIS' sponsors and developers) as a mentor, who saved him from the terrible fate of becoming a test subject in AXIS (that claimed to have developed or owned the OMICRON armor, rather than revealing that these armors are more like alien symbiotes studied and customized by the "developers") only to become a living weapon in service to the Saqraruna (disguised as the Republic of Tahuantinsuyu's military, that's also partially alien in origin), before Fang "corrected his mistakes" (or rather pursued his actual agenda - to use Saqraruna's resources against their own, in defense of his actual sponsor), exposing just some of the corruption within Tahuantinsuyu's scientific development community, and part of it's goal. In the same occasion when the CIA and mercenary forces captured Axayacatl on the Antisuyuan/Brazilian border at the Amazonian Jungle, the Insect Syndicate has been activated, and Ryder orchestrated his escape, forging his own death and disappearance. Because no Insect Syndicate member knows the other's identity behind the mask, the Saqraruna, that would still investigate his disappearance, had chosen the next FIREFLY (Choque Illa, a former public relations manager of Tahuantinsuyu's technological council) and recruited him, without letting others know or without major issues. The Saqraruna, despite knowing Ryder was missing, still failed to figure out the actual Axayacatl was missing as well (even though they could tell the CIA owned a Cuetzpalin, it could be anyone, from Macoel to Moctezuma), as Ryder and Macoel resurfaced as Axayacatl/Lacerta, and guess what, resumed their work for the Saqraruna, sometimes even close to the Insect Syndicate, but this time looking for the truth behind the Alpha-Omega armors which its members used - where did it really come from, who's the supplier of this alien technology, and for which purpose does he supply select earthlings with it? Ryder isn't the only one making these questions, even though he may not know it.
Ryder has found out about Macoel and only agreed to establish a symbiotic relation with him (thus allowing his transformation into a Cuetzpalin) sometime after October 2011, following a mission he worked for the Insect Syndicate, as the FIREFLY, when he was activated to capture the Cuetzpalin Montezuma & Paynal on US (they threatened to sever a link from a drug-dealing network that traded drugs infected with an enhanced "Duskoplasm-virus" that the Saqraruna Organization intended to benefit from), and after two fights, was neutralized and identified as Ryder, by Montezuma, who's actually Paul Powhatan, his childhood friend from Akwesasne. They've parted ways, and while William - the Cuetzpalin Paynal - opposed to even dialoguing with Ryder, who he considered an enemy to be killed, Powhatan would later separately plan alongside him his departure from the Saqraruna, to allow the continuation of Macoel's life (as he needed a vertebrate host to remain alive, even if he had to let the host keep control of his body) and the defense of not only the autonomy of their people, but the prevention of the end of "individual life" on the planet - considering what Ryder have found while working for the Saqraruna - that they headed a project, the Human Automation, which was possibly tied to the development of the Alpha-Omega armors. That "Automation" also fit with Tupaq's secret plan of transforming Earth into a mobile, mass destruction satellite generated by artificial conditions. Ryder's continued association with the Saqraruna would finally bring him to the source of the Alpha-Omega armors: the race of the Dzolob, biomechanical native inhabitants of the planet of Sothis, whose history could tell what path humanity was taking, and ultimately which processes would bring us to the same path as them.

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Description
These are three original characters from my story project - currently titled the IN LAK'ECH Mythos (In Lak'Ech A Lak'In is a Yucatec Mayan phrase meaning "I'm another you, you're another me").
The three of them are CUETZPALIN (from the nahuatl "lizard"), a race of humanoid reptile beings native from the realm of AZTLÁN that coexisted with different cultures, civilizations and human & non-human populations of "Anahuac" (how the Earth was known by the people of Aztlán, also a name for the known world to the nahua peoples who inhabited the American Continent) centuries before the Spanish invasion, in the Fifth Sun Era (which started in the 14th Century, and is still our era). Needless to say, the kind of the CUETZPALIN and the culture of AZTLÁN (referred to as "aztec") is prominently featured in IN LAK'ECH, and heavily draws from a diverse source of actual pre-hispanic cosmologies (Maya, Mexica, Inca, among many others). The very division of time into "Sun Eras" is derived from the Mexica Cosmology.

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If you want to know more, read the following, but be warned: there are several SPOILERS and major plot details of IN LAK'ECH:
  In IN LAK'ECH, the Cuetzpalin are quite versatile creatures, who can live symbiotically with other vertebrates. Born as eggs, in their initial life stages after they break from their isolation they're small snake-like creatures (a stage called Tonalcoatl, which is a combination of the nahuatl words for "fate" and "snake"), that within years fully grow to a lizard form, and later, into a bipedal, human-sized Cuetzpalin. The common lifespan of a Cuetzpalin can extend from a century to two or three, as they get older they develop feathers on their backs and the spikes on their arms grow into wings. Some Cuetzpalin choose to cut their tail, and that's no problem, it can grow again. Indeed, they have enhanced regenerative abilities in comparison to most vertebrates, even reptiles, because their blood has considerable quantity of a healing substance called Atl-Tlachinolli (a nahuatl concept that can read either as "sacred water" or "boiling water", and means either "blood" -of any kind of animal, human or non-human, including the Cuetzpalin- or "holy war"). This word also refers to the blood of any other creature, and is only distinguished from Teyoliatl (a combination of the nahuatl words "Teyolia", a vital energy related to the heart, and "Atl", "water") - the green substance which is the real responsible for a Cuetzpalin's regenerative abilities, present in their "Atl-Tlachinolli" - when the later is found on nature, in certain lakes and waterbeds.
The Teyoliatl is originated from the Quinametzin ("giants") and other beings from their lineage (elsewhere called as Jentilak, Leshy, Elves, Alrunas, Kiad-pod, Wamoa-pod, Pabid). They're ancient beings who rivalred the Elemental Gods millennia ago, and whose conflict has ultimately led to the evolution of life across many planets, including AZTLÁN, that's built over the remnants of ancient Quinametzin Cipactli (The Primordial Waters' Crocodile) and Kukulcan (the Feathered Serpent, or a Feathered Serpent, the possible ancestor of all Cuetzpalin). One of such "Elemental Gods", Huitzilopochtli (from the nahuatl "Hummingbird", the God of War, patron of Mexico and Fifth Sun), is also closely tied to the origins of the Cuetzpalin and the Aztec Confederation, which grew to become the ruling corpus of the Aztec Civilization (he's not, however, the only Elemental God involved with Aztlán). The Quinametzin and their fellows are self-sufficient creatures, and that detail may have been what put them on the way of the Elemental Gods and their plans - that varied from populating planets with super-predators to establish sophisticated slave-trading networks across the galaxy - but Huitzilopochtli knew there was more about the Teyoliatl, and from his studies and constant intervention, has molded part of the Cuetzpalin and the civilizations they participated on towards a diversity of militarized, bloodletting, ritual human and non-human sacrificing states.
After a first lifetime, that can end either from old age or in battle, by sustaining more damage than the regenerative processes of a Cuetzpalin's body can afford (and it can shed it's skin like most reptiles, and even regenerate limbs - what means a lot), a Cuetzpalin's nervous system, or rather its main organ -the Tonalcoatl, which stores its memories and generate consciousness- can detach from its body, and slither through nature in search for other vertebrates that can live with it symbiotically. In this stage, the Tonalcoatl develops a telepathical communication with the host (that doesn't have to understand nahuatl) and allows it the ability to transform from its current form into that of a Cuetzpalin (or the closest thing to it, fish not necessarily will grow fingers. It's also prudent to remind that the Cuetzpalin have a wide variety of forms, some of them resemble snakes, others crocodiles, turtles, lizards, they cover most of the reptiles' phenotypes) for a considerable amount of time, or until the host itself endures either the most damage it can take, or a considerable amount of times transformed into a Cuetzpalin. When that happens, the Tonalcoatl, that until then lived in symbiosis, reccurs to a parasitical ethos, and takes over the body and consciousness of the sentient host. In this stage, the Cuetzpalin can still transform itself from a new Cuetzpalin form back into the host's likeness, in some cases completely stealing it's identity. Obviously, this has put the Cuetzpalin in somewhat privileged positions in relation to humans and other vertebrates on both Aztec and Anahuac (Earth) societies, even though individual behavior differ - not all Cuetzpalin would take humans as "ixiptla" (from the nahuatl word meaning "impersonator"). This has also took the human sacrifice policies to a whole new level of population control - human ixiptla could get killed, and their bodies could still become hosts for Tonalcoatl. In the same way, the way a Cuetzpalin sheds its skin may have influenced the usage of skins of human and nonhuman animals as clothing throughout different cultures. The Cuetzpalin are a die-hard species that throughout the latest Sun Eras has been associated to military discipline and prowess, be it through the exploits of the bureaucratic Aztec Confederation or even its earthly incarnations (the Xiuhcoatl Empire in the 3rd Sun Era, the Toltec Confederation, in the 4th Sun Era, or the Mexica Tlahtoloyan in the 5th Sun Era). But there's even more to their kind and their blood than mere survival skills...

During the dawn of the Second Sun Era, or the transition between the first and second ones (some 2900 years b.C), Topakhon, a distant planet from the K Pacha Solar System, has been converted into a self-sufficient, mobile satellite and mass destruction weapon, powered by a domesticated Black Hole which is both it's power source (taking care of its artificial atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and geology) and it's main weapon - against other Solar Systems. The people of Topakhon, in the last years back then, witnessed a proccess of severe modification (something that could be considered, nowadays, an "Automation"), becoming biomechanical and biologically linked to its newest bureaucratic state, a "magocracy" called the ORS OHORELA (from the enochian "Legislation of Darkness"), ruled by the immortal Primordial Dragon Tupaq, Elemental God of Darkness (or rather "Absence of Light", if not of "Phantom Dark Energy" itself), who would be known in Aztlán as Mixcoatl ("Cloud Serpent"), many centuries later adopted as a patron by tribes which controlled the Mexica before their leaders' emancipation, through the foundation of their own empire. The ORS OHORELA was strategically divided into four different "Topakar nations" (Palarokhiel in the Southeast continent, Wary Kayan in the Southwest, Apuqohcan in the Northwest and Xibahpukon in the Northeast), overseen by Tupaq's ministers, the Ta'tal (likely a corrupt form of Teteoh, nahuatl for "gods" or "mysterious, unexplainable ones"). Each Ta'tal mastered a different art of the "Topakar magic" (teleportation, necromancy, creation of illusions, control over darkness, astral embodiment, modification of gravity, isolation, among other things made possible y the effective usage of the Darr hidden element, much later considered the "Philosopher's Stone"). Needless to say, Topakhon's path of destruction escalated into a 12 centuries-lasting intergalactic conflict which approximated distant cultures and led to the colonization of many more planets by life and suffering. But what helped the ORS OHORELA to come into being, or the proccess which modified the Topakar people, their environment, their needs and their planet, was a bloody "Revolution" carried out by alien hybrids reputedly born from Tupaq, creatures made of materialized darkness who also inhabit others' nightmares, the infamous Yana Phuyu (from the quechua "Dark Clouds", also known by the aztecs as Centzonmimixcoa "Four Hundred alike the Cloud Serpent" and by the Mazdaists as Daeva), "shadow demons". These fiends are virtually immune to most weapons, save for a combination of a green mineral named by the Chronpuchians (a kind of bird-like bipedal humanoids), and later the mayans as Yaxchilán (from the yucatec "green stones"elsewhere called serapel, another " hidden element") and either Teyoliatl or a Cuetzpalin's Atl-Tlachinolli. Natural sources of Teyoliatl existed - usually, territories where ancient Quinametzin and related beings used to dwell, before they were hunt almost to extinction - and several of them existed in Aztlán, or even in Anahuac, where Aztec colonies were being set (like the island of Nahui-Atl, part of the Atlantic continent in the northern Atlantic). In truth, this combination wasn't completely necessary - any blade with a Cuetzpalin's blood could be initially harmful to a mimixcoa, and in Aztlán the obsidian element was more commonly used as a weapon rather than the varieties of Yaxchilán - the difference is that if it wasn't Yaxchilán, it would need to be recharged, and Yaxchilán could also store or mimick the properties of more concentrated quantities of Teyoliatl (the greener it looks, the shinier it gets), making it even more corrosive to the materialized darkness. The Aztec Cuetzpalin were the first to realize those properties, and throughout history have been associated with the end of the conflict, which witnessed the destruction of Topakhon and the imprisonment of Mixcoatl & his fellows into the dimension of Absolute Darkness for 3000 years (from 1658 b.C, in the late Second Sun Era, to 1342 a.C, in the early Fifth Sun Era).
Of course, in 3000 years much has changed, and the old stories weren't even remembered by most of the people. The Cuetzpalin who lived in Anahuac at the time didn't even remember who were the Centzonmimixcoa or why they bothered taking humans as ixiptla - they didn't even remember where Aztlán was originally located. The first contact between the Centzonmimixcoa and the Cuetzpalin in that age would happen in the untold war between the Mexica Tlahtoloyan (or Triple Mexica Confederation, nowadays popularly and mistakenly referred to as "Aztec Empire") and the Tahuantinsuyu (from the quechua "Four Regions", a.k.a the Inca Empire), between 1481 and 1493. That has turned the central american jungles into a deadly battleground populated by dragons and necromancers, but would end with the death of the Inca emperor, Tupaq Yupanqui (that name is suspicious, isn't it). That wouldn't be, however, the end of the Centzonmimixcoa - these shadow fiends would hide and wait for the spanish invasion - and as an enhanced version of the Duskoplasm virus (a sentient form of materialized virus that can spread and control over infected beings, it can manifest into victims of bulbonic plague and smallpox) - not only hunt the Cuetzpalin to extinction, but also lead some of their survivors into an underground network of slave-trading, in some 200 years extinguishing all records of their existence. In doing so they were greatly helped by another disease, the christian faith and its institutions, but that's just another detail of what could be perceived as Tupaq's revenge. Tupaq, however, isn't omnipotent, and he had to employ the latest incarnations of past allies of his - the Saqraruna Organization (from the quechua "evil people"), from the K Pacha System. The spanish colonization of americas, the genocide it inflicted for the pursuit of gold, slaves and market, has also been crucial to extinguish sources of Teyoliatl (a substance that can mix with water and many more, but that lose it's properties if exposed to certain conditions. Once abundant in Lake Texcoco, where the city of Tenochtitlán -nowadays Mexico City- was located and built upon, with a proper aqueduct system, it has completely disappeared after the spanish colony's poor management, which led to the almost complete drying out of the Lake). Without Cuetzpalin or Teyoliatl, the Centzonmimixcoa were ready to rule again, and this time, Tupaq & allies planned to transform Anahuac, or the Earth, into "Topakhon II". Still, some of those that helped him had other more petty goals - like the christianization of the indigenous peoples, or the establishment of a global economy, and even the eugenic appetite for controlled, aesthetically motivated genocides.
RETURN OF THE CUETZPALIN
  So, save for one or two hiding individuals, that kept using human hosts as disguises, the Cuetzpalin were extinct from the Earth. Or so their enemies would like to hear. In August 8th 2008, the Tonalcoatl of late Mexican ruler Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, an unnaturally super-fast Cuetzpalin, has found a human host - 14 years old student William Mattoni - to symbiotically live with. Using his new powers, William, who was motivated by the defense of Animal Rights, the pursuit of Animal Liberation, and a no compromise posture of might makes right, has started a series of direct action campaigns, destruction of property, assassination of landlords, business owners and workers related to animal expoitation - meat, dairy, eggs, fishing, pisciculture, animal agriculture, animal testing, fur, beekeeping, animal traffic, hunting and so on - across the American continent, starting in Brazil, and then the world. Also motivated by the struggle for the land and the preservation of indigenous autonomy over the global economy's increasingly imperialistic agenda, William also contacted resisting forces and managed to cause some damage in a lot of other industries & their governmental support - mining, gas, oil, paper, other industries also related to the environmental destruction and which employed slave labor - needless to say, putting on his way private assassins, the military, the police force, all State security and this repressive apparel. And of course, in his lizard form, he adopted a quite excentric identity - that of "a Pre-Columbian, immortal, last of his kind lizardman, the prophesied Cuetzpalin Paynal" (from the nahuatl "Fast Lizard"). No government, no people were safe - he eventually became an enemy of the Republic of Tahuantinsuyu, a modern State named after the Inca Empire. But despite he was a threat never experienced by the people of that generation, he didn't do it alone, nor did he have any intention of taking any kind of leadership over any kind of organization - he just knew where to hit, to make the entire system blow. That surely got the attention of the two other Cuetzpalin who existed at the time, and also of a third, who had his own goals, too (the autonomy of the indigenous peoples of Anahuac), and some times conflicted with Paynal's own. Either way, when they learned they could do more by teaming up against common enemies, in September 2009 they discovered that there were more Mexica-era Cuetzpalin, alive (or at least kept in stasis or cryogenic isolation) and kept by the secret Saqraruna Organization (that despite alien in origin, had already moved most of their bases from K Pacha into underground complex sithin Tahuantinsuyu, and operated under special sub-divisions of its governmental bureaucracy, especially the Council for Advanced Technological, Industrial and Energetic Development). They also found out it wasn't a conspiracy that had the Cuetzpalin hunt down in the planet, even though it could've been motivated by the vengeance of some diehard groups like the Centzonmimixcoa, but a coalition of different forces and common interests, including humans who wanted to rise above some social conditions which the Mexica Cuetzpalin were imposing over them, including traditional enemies of the Mexica - like the Purépecha and the Tlaxcaltecas. They also later found out, through some of these ancient Cuetzpalin they've just liberated, the path back to Aztlán, a portal which linked Anahuac and Aztlán (or rather two - one in the Colombian Jungle, and another on ancient structures in the Zapoteca area, nowadays Oaxaca, plus an interdimensional rift in the North Atlantic ocean, where part of the island of Nahui-Atl has been sucked into centuries before). Tupaq, too, was alive -in the form of the Tahuantinsuyuan republic's controversial national hero, Túpaq Amaru III, who planned to use the resources of the Saqraruna and Tahuantinsuyu to accelerate his plan of converting the Earth and its inhabitants into a new Topakhon. But while Túpaq and the Centzonmimixcoa had nefarious plans for the Earth, so did the Aztec Confederation and the many Cuetzpalin that inhabited it, including the Teteoh which ruled it - their bloodlust would've consumed the lives of many indigenous peoples Paynal and others fought hard to protect all these years, in order to re-stage ancient fights between the Elemental Gods.
In no time, the human hosts would learn most of their Tonalcoatl symbiotes didn't care for their lives, instead, they couldn't help but barely wait for the time to take over their hosts. It was too late, in June 2011, when Axayacatl took over one of them, and restarted his life as the intergalactic mercenary known as "Lacerta", who ironically or not, kept a fortune made by succesful jobs to figures such as the Saqraruna and other related groups. This made William find out that, despite separated from Moctezuma (and somehow still able to transform into the Cuetzpalin Paynal) years ago, if he kept using his powers, he could lose his ability to transform himself back into his original form, in a time he was finishing high school, but was more concerning in surviving, by escaping from international government, police & corporative security forces - as he was linked to international legitimate, despite still criminal acts such as freeing animals and slaves, or destoying property and killing people like slavers, politicians, army leaders, mercenaries and so on. He sought alternative ways to keep using some supernatural power, but in December 21st 2012, while facing another Elemental God related to the colonization of the americas and the project of a global economy, as a matter of survival, he has become Cuetzpalin once again, and was unable to return to his human form. This feathered, winged, dragon-like creature would later be known as the Cuetzpalin NAGUAL (named after a tradition of therianthropy, or shape-shifting in Central America). He didn't regret his decision - the heavy toll and limitations imposed by society over him, also his human conditions only dragged him down, so it sounded a better option to become a super-fast lizardman than relying on bureaucracies and social relations. Still, his life wasn't easy: by living like a non-human animal 24/7, he'd learn what it is to have no rights at the eyes of all people, to fight for food and survival, and to exist in a nature where it's die or be killed, by predation, disease, suffering and death. Still, William knew who his enemies were, and what he had to do, the fight was still far from over, even after years, he was betrayed and broken, but could still fight - against all, against mass society and civilization, and even nature.

A NEW THREAT
The Nagual was one of the few individuals on Earth to know that, after Tupaq's failed attempt to accelerate the transformation of the planet into a mobile mass destruction satellite, and the destruction of one of his labs beneath the Death Valley Desert on Arizona, in May 2010, he's recurred to a B Plan which is bringing an actually finished, fully working mass destruction mobile weapon (a domesticated Black Hole) into Earth - this, he has found after a short expedition to the K Pacha Solar System in December 2010. There was no force on Earth able to stop it, and no force on Earth aware of it's eventual coming, save for an ally of his, who in 2012 went by the name of " Chtonian Triton", another human cursed or blessed with the power of mutating himself at will into another non-human species, and who, like him, had made more enemies than he could count - for the sake of saving some animals from a cycle of misery, and granting them a little dignity and freedom. In 2013, the "Nagual" was approached by a mysterious man, named Juan Matos, who claimed to be a Nagual himself, able to transform into other animals, and who told the young human turned Cuetzpalin that "the Quinametzin (the enemies of the Elemental Gods) wanted the Nagual to save Earth", and that "for ages he looked for him", but "was unable to reach". Because the Cuetzpalin Nagual, William, has been very skeptical, he wouldn't bother listening to Juan and his prophetic sounding words, until actual wooden giants confirmed he had been contacted, and even though there was no prophecy and mysticism involved, the Nagual could be of help to some Quinametzin in advancing their will - the presevation of life on earth, under the circumstances they saw fit, rather than that imposed by one or another Elemental God. And by the second half of 2013, Lapolakh, the God of Fire, who was also known as Xiuhtecuhtli (Fire Lord) in the Xiuhcoatl Empire Era, had means which could accelerate his plan - of transforming Earth into a star-like self-generating energy network, which inhabitants would be reduced to a horde-like, ever-laboring mass, fully-automated, genetically subservient to their leaders. What Lapolakh has seen, for years, as a convenient answer to the problem posed by Tupaq's plans, was as nightmarish as Tupaq's plans themselves, and to prevent both at a time was where the Chthonian came in - this time, the Nagual would infiltrate Lapolakh's spacial complex and destroy it from the inside, while the Chthonian and his ally, Kharon (a dragon who claims to descend from Tupaq), would disable Topakhon Mobile II.
  What neither expected is that in June 2013, Tupaq would be assaulted by an ancient enemy and be hijacked from his supposedly natural condition of God of Darkness, confined in the mortal body of a 53 years old human (technically, 64, but it spent 9 years isolated in the Absolute Darkness, where there's no time or oxydation), and soon enough, some of his associates on Tahuantinsuyu, led by Dr. Howard Fang, would learn about his plans of destruction, and through covert means plan not only his downfall, but also the dismantling of the Tahuantinsuyuan Republic, and the hijacking of its resources by the traitors' actual associates - a rival of the Saqraruna Organization, one of the last remaining Yakuruna species members, stranded on Earth before the destruction of their own homeland by Tupaq and his closest ally, SPECTRO. Fang, in cooperation with key figures inside the UN, while not fully revealing the existence of the Topakhon Mobile II, would leak certain details about the Saqraruna to NATO operatives backed by an old rival, the ABEL Inc (related to the creation of the then defunct Private AXIS Military Academy and the alien, super-powerful and adaptive Alpha-Omega armors). The Nagual found himself stranded into a colonial, terraformed base on Venus, operated by Haijianese (Chinese) personnel allied to Lapolakh and his associates - The Yan Hou Fire Lords, a group of Nine human & non-human individuals, ranging from businessmen and entrepeneurs to immortal, draconian undead parasites, from where they planned to carry out the transformation of Earth. While he struggled towards that end, the Chthonian has mysteriously returned to Earth, and the assailants of Tupaq remained unidentified - they weren't the "Novus Civilizatio" (an international secret society composed of bourgeois men vouching for the development of the "Human Automation"), the "Hebdomad" (a group of seven people bound to seven Amesha Spentas, beings of light or angels originated from Ohrmuz, the Elemental God of Light), the Jötunn Organization (an underground scientifical and slave-trading complex, part of a larger network, but mostly composed of members from the eponymous kind, Frost Giants that have manipulated mass migrations across recent human history, and who are led by Ymir, Elemental God of Frost), not even the CIA, traditional enemies of his. This time, the secret assailants of Tupaq, backed by an ally of his, were the secret APKALLU, led by their master, Enki, the last of the Anunnaki, a kind destroyed by Topakhon Mobile Centuries ago. They would remain in secret, while Enki hijacked Topakhon Mobile II for his own and his associates took the distraction caused by tensioning civil war as an advantage for their goals. With Tupaq's powers, Enki foresaw how the acceleration of the dissipation of all matter in the universe (the Big Rip), caused by the destruction perpetrated by Topakhon Mobile II, could make him omnipotent, so he didn't want to waste that effort. On Earth, that which remained of the Cuetzpalin had different goals, but would all be linked to the secrets concerning those that created not only the Topakhon Mobile II, but also had a hand in developing the Alpha-Omega and thus instigating several conflicts in late human history - the Saqraruna Organization.

"AXAYACATL"
Axayacatl has been a well known Cuetzpalin mercenary (at least in te underground, intergalactic bounty-hunter scene), who has worked for the Saqraruna, the Palarokhian Society (a medieval society of mages originally based in Eurasia, the ones responsible for bringing Tupaq from the dead after 3000 years of confinement) and ultimately it's faces on the surface - the Republic of Tahuantinsuyu, also benefitting the UN, some "sovereign States", and other enterprises, in 2011, when during his return (after a hiatus which started in late 2008) he mined local and collective efforts of organizing anarchist resistance and indigenous autonomy on the Amazonian Forest areas of Brazil and Antisuyu, a region of Tahuantinsuyu (these efforts, by the way, had to do with Paynal). After that, Axayacatl looked forward to expanding his fortune, but also to his own ties to the Jötunn Organization, another client, which has promised him to create better human hosts, while he pursued his own secret agenda of capturing the Tonalcoatl of unnaturally super-powered Cuetzpalin, some like Paynal himself (who has super-speed), who have been identified by the Jötunn across history. By the time, though, most have moved to Aztlán. When Fang betrayed Tahuantinsuyu, and international armies and mercenaries movied into Tahuantinsuyuan borders, Axayacatl was captured in the front lines, and separated from his current host - Brazilian journalist Ian Ribeiro, related to the "autonomist initiatives" commonly referred to as Necoc Yaotl, which isn't an international organization, but a free association of paramilitary anarchism-inspired belligerents, that used to include Cuetzpalin on their ranks between 2010 and 2011 - has been captured by the CIA. After all these years, since 2008, when the first Cuetzpalin became publicly known, and later in 2009, when it claimed to be one of the last of what used to be a larger species, it was the first time a government bureaucratic organ would have its hands on one of them to study over (while the human host has been jailed). The studies, sponsored by the military engineering enterprise ABEL Inc, of course took their interests in regards: Make it a program for creating reptilian super soldiers. The first test subject: FBI agent William Ford Jr , a former officer under the wing of Lana Bridges, the adoptive daughter of ABEL's CEO Joseph, and the current user of the telekinetic NI armor. William volunteered, and because of his own service record, despite his psycho background, allowed to join - among his succesful missions, infiltration and destruction of resistance movements across america. He'd ne usually referred to as Project: Agent Saurus, but because all other known Cuetzpalin had their identities made up from some Pre-hispanic, mostly nahua background stories (Paynal, Montezuma, Omepaynal, Cuauhtemoc, Axayacatl), William has made use of the same source, claiming to be ATLACATL, the hero of the Pipiltin (a nahua people associated to the Mexica, they're regarded as ancestors to the El Salvadoran people. Atlacatl has also been the name of a death squad backed by CIA and private military agencies operating in Central America under imperialist purposes). An official mercenary, the dreadful Amargasaurus-looking Atlacatl is the combination of a cold and psychotic agent and the ancient, traitorous & manipulative Axayacatl. In order to avoid his complete takeover by the Tonalcoatl, William is only allowed to symbiotically fuse with it during missions - and in those he's usually accompanied by a special subdivision of the CIA, that includes Lana, besides Bradley Kyle, the latest user of ALPHA, and Nick McKinley, current user of the MI armor.
The actual Axayacatl has been made prisoner by the CIA, yet another Cuetzpalin roams the Saqraruna's radar sporting the identity of Axayacatl, or alternately, how he's mostly known among the European Palarokhian Society, "LACERTA" (latin for lizard). Yes, in fact he's a bounty hunter and can be hired by anyone paying enough - even though in the latest centuries, these have been either Jötunn or Saqraruna, no one else - but this Lacerta has his own goals, and they're not low: discovering the truth behind the Saqraruna Organization and exposing it to competent forces. The latest "AXAYACATL" is a symbiotic fusion of Douglas Ryder, the Algonquian ex-AXIS (as OMICRON) and ex-Insect Syndicate (as FIREFLY) agent, and the Mexica-era heroic Cuetzpalin liberator Macoel (whose symbiosis with Ryder's childhood friend, Paul Powhatan, has been used by the later under the name of Montezuma). While working for AXIS, Ryder had Howard Fang (who worked for the military institute following his contract with the Ulhaden Corporation, one of AXIS' sponsors and developers) as a mentor, who saved him from the terrible fate of becoming a test subject in AXIS (that claimed to have developed or owned the OMICRON armor, rather than revealing that these armors are more like alien symbiotes studied and customized by the "developers") only to become a living weapon in service to the Saqraruna (disguised as the Republic of Tahuantinsuyu's military, that's also partially alien in origin), before Fang "corrected his mistakes" (or rather pursued his actual agenda - to use Saqraruna's resources against their own, in defense of his actual sponsor), exposing just some of the corruption within Tahuantinsuyu's scientific development community, and part of it's goal. In the same occasion when the CIA and mercenary forces captured Axayacatl on the Antisuyuan/Brazilian border at the Amazonian Jungle, the Insect Syndicate has been activated, and Ryder orchestrated his escape, forging his own death and disappearance. Because no Insect Syndicate member knows the other's identity behind the mask, the Saqraruna, that would still investigate his disappearance, had chosen the next FIREFLY (Choque Illa, a former public relations manager of Tahuantinsuyu's technological council) and recruited him, without letting others know or without major issues. The Saqraruna, despite knowing Ryder was missing, still failed to figure out the actual Axayacatl was missing as well (even though they could tell the CIA owned a Cuetzpalin, it could be anyone, from Macoel to Moctezuma), as Ryder and Macoel resurfaced as Axayacatl/Lacerta, and guess what, resumed their work for the Saqraruna, sometimes even close to the Insect Syndicate, but this time looking for the truth behind the Alpha-Omega armors which its members used - where did it really come from, who's the supplier of this alien technology, and for which purpose does he supply select earthlings with it? Ryder isn't the only one making these questions, even though he may not know it.
Ryder has found out about Macoel and only agreed to establish a symbiotic relation with him (thus allowing his transformation into a Cuetzpalin) sometime after October 2011, following a mission he worked for the Insect Syndicate, as the FIREFLY, when he was activated to capture the Cuetzpalin Montezuma & Paynal on US (they threatened to sever a link from a drug-dealing network that traded drugs infected with an enhanced "Duskoplasm-virus" that the Saqraruna Organization intended to benefit from), and after two fights, was neutralized and identified as Ryder, by Montezuma, who's actually Paul Powhatan, his childhood friend from Akwesasne. They've parted ways, and while William - the Cuetzpalin Paynal - opposed to even dialoguing with Ryder, who he considered an enemy to be killed, Powhatan would later separately plan alongside him his departure from the Saqraruna, to allow the continuation of Macoel's life (as he needed a vertebrate host to remain alive, even if he had to let the host keep control of his body) and the defense of not only the autonomy of their people, but the prevention of the end of "individual life" on the planet - considering what Ryder have found while working for the Saqraruna - that they headed a project, the Human Automation, which was possibly tied to the development of the Alpha-Omega armors. That "Automation" also fit with Tupaq's secret plan of transforming Earth into a mobile, mass destruction satellite generated by artificial conditions. Ryder's continued association with the Saqraruna would finally bring him to the source of the Alpha-Omega armors: the race of the Dzolob, biomechanical native inhabitants of the planet of Sothis, whose history could tell what path humanity was taking, and ultimately which processes would bring us to the same path as them.

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