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Sometimes I wish that things were completely different.
I always loved those ‘choose your own adventure’ books growing up in school; if you picked the ‘wrong’ path, you could always turn back and choose the other option until you got to the ‘happy ending.’ How cool would it be if life were like that? I’d definitely go back and do things a bit differently, especially the part where I basically signed my whole life away
and…at the time…unknowingly traded in my humanity to be some kind of science project for the rest of my life. But alas, life’s not like that at all and hindsight is 20/20 as they say. In retrospect, I’ve never really been what most would consider ‘normal.’
As part of my social re-acquaintance therapy to help me stay in touch with my humanity, one of my favorite things to do is to go to places where there is lots of life happening…say like a park or a mall…and watch normal people live life normally; usually from a safe distance of course. While watching, I sometimes fantasize what it would have been like if I was fortunate enough to have lived a ‘normal’ life. What if my mom didn’t die when I was a toddler and she was in my life at least long enough to teach me how to be a lady? Daddy would go on and on at just how wonderful of a woman she was, and how much I reminded him of her. And speaking of my dad, what if he didn’t get sucked into the downward spiral of gambling, drug abuse, and addiction that caused our lives to come crashing down?

I like to think about if I had grown up with a wealthy and famous dad and didn’t have to struggle much in life. I wonder how life would’ve been without eating ramen noodles, pork n beans, PBJ sandwiches, and Vienna sausages on a rotating basis because that’s all he could afford for us to eat. I wonder what would’ve it have been like if I had grown up in that beautiful mansion that we lived in before the bank repo’ed it because my dad couldn’t pay his taxes thanks in part to his destructive habits instead of growing up in a two bedroom roach motel of an apartment. What if I wasn’t the shy, tall, overweight, and awkward looking gal that sat in the back of the class and hardly said anything? Would my classmates still have picked on me so bad? Would I have had more friends?

What if my turbulent adolescence and teenage years weren’t so turbulent? Would some guy have asked me to the prom so that I didn’t have to go as the third wheel with one of my friends and her boyfriend? What if I didn’t have to experience the triple whammy of having my best friend on the face of the planet move away, watching my dad die right in front of me, and getting into a huge fight with my drunken coke-addict bitch of a stepmother who verbally and emotionally tormented me on a daily basis…where I literally knocked her into a coma with a baseball bat. What if she didn’t haunt my dreams and give me nightmares well into my adult years? Not trying to brag, but I’m quite amazed at how I made it through without committing suicide or just going bonkers. My youth was depressing at best…and it didn’t get much better as an adult.

I sometimes wish that instead of go to the military straight out of high school, maybe I would’ve been able to find a way to go to college or at least a community college or vocational school. I could’ve gotten a degree in physical therapy or philosophy or something that I wouldn’t have been able to actually find a decent job in. Maybe I would’ve met and fell in love with a nice guy who would have ended up being my college sweetheart…we would’ve dated for several years, then gone on to get married, have a few kids, a dog and a cat, maybe a nice house in the suburbs, and lived a nice and happy life. You know…the whole American dream thing. Hell, it didn’t even have to be the whole picture book American dream…I could’ve still gone to the military, served my four years, and gotten out to either go to school on the G.I. bill or use my military credentials to go work some civilian job somewhere. That’s if I wouldn’t have volunteered myself for the supersoldier program!
Quite often I just wish that I would’ve become a ‘normal’ woman. I guess that just wasn’t in the cards for
me. If things were different…I can’t help but wonder just where I’d be now. Would I have still ended up going through the crazy series of major life events where I would somehow end up an Amazon-sized experimental military bionically
enhanced supersoldier and eventually earning the rank of First Class Commander? Well actually, those years were some of the best of my life. I finally found what I was good at and what I believe I was put here on this Earth to do…things
finally started to seem as close to ‘normal’ as they had ever been. I was respected and loved despite the fact
that I can be a hardass at times, and it was then when I was given the nickname ‘Athena’…the War Goddess because of my real heavy rep on the battlefield. But what if things didn’t fall apart from there? And I would I have cross paths
and been reunited with my estranged best friend that moved away back in high school, only to be betrayed by her and set up to be ambushed, watch my entire unit slaughtered before being nearly killed myself, captured, and then
extensively turned into an evil Elite cyborg sentinel programmed against my will trapped inside my own mind while I was powerless in controlling my actions? Would it have led to me then being rescued several years later, deprogrammed, given a new body, and turned glorified mercenary bounty hunter for the good guys?
Sometimes it’s the little things in life that organics take for granted that I miss and ponder just what would it be like if I were ‘normal.’ I tell Techna in our therapy sessions that it’s pretty damn hard to stay acclimated with my human side when I’m constantly reminded that I’m not a ‘normal’ human anymore…physically at least! Like, for instance…most organics don’t have to worry about waiting to be reassembled and having fifty million wires and plugs to disconnect from my frame as soon as I they wake up. ‘Normal’ humans will most likely never know what it feels like to have their head detached and reattached from their body; or they’ll never know what it’s like to look at your headless body as it’s being worked on while floating in a stasis tube as a disembodied head with tons of tubes jammed and plugged into every orifice and dataport interface jack…this is something I experience quite frequently.

And even on the days where Techna doesn’t completely dismantle me for repairs, there are still not-so-subtle reminders that I’m more machine than organic now. There are times where I go weeks without my cyberarmor being removed and other than my face and exposed fingers I forget that there are still some parts of me that at least look remotely organic…I didn’t have this luxury under Cybertech’s control as I was hardly recognizable as a humanoid anymore. I was lucky to even see my face some days back then with all of the hardware and machinery that they loaded me up with! Techna wonders why didn’t they do a full-body prosthesis and just implant my brain into an all new entirely cyber-synthetic body? And even if am able to go around without my armor plugged directly into my body, I often feel more naked without it than I do when I’m actually naked…if that makes any sense. Or if I do start to get comfortable in my own ‘skin’, something will happen in battle where I lose a limb or I get a hole blown through my abdomen and at the site of the dangling wires and sparking circuitry I’m quickly reminded that said ‘skin’ and muscles are synthetic and merely for aesthetic purposes.
Well, at least they can regenerate themselves and my self-repair function will activate if the damage isn’t too severe…plus my pain editor implants are a God send!!! I guess that’s one advantage that I have over organics!

Oddly enough, I miss other random little things…like waking up in the morning and going straight to the bathroom to take that first morning’s pee. Or waking with an extreme case of bed head, rather than having to put on my synthetic wig to cover up my permanently bald circuitry riddled noggin in the front and the reinforced titanium alloy cranial
casing and skull plates in the back. My hair looks, acts, and feels like real hair and covers up my chrome dome quite
nicely…it’s even the same shade of dark red that it was naturally…but still it’s not the same. If I did still have
my natural head of hair, would I have split ends or dandruff?

Sometimes I stare in the mirror at myself before I put my wig on and I fall into a trance while staring into the reflection of my electric blue bionic optical sensors. I often perform an X-ray scan on my head, looking past the completely metal cranial skull casting to see the chunk of brain that’s some of the last actual original organic components that’s left of me pre-cybernation. I miss how the world looks without several different energy signature readings, or constant scans being performed on everyone and everything, my vision automatically zooming in or panning out to get the clearest possible HD visual of whatever I’m focusing on, or of course my obligatory targeting system! They didn’t glow or were capable of all of
the cool stuff that my bionic optical implants are, but I miss my natural blue eyes.
At times I wonder just how I would look now without the cybernetics, synthetics, and nanotechnology that are constantly regenerating my organic tissues and keep me looking relatively young…I am pushing fifty even though it looks like I haven’t aged a day past twenty-five. I know that I’m not that old yet, but would I have started to develop crow’s feet or bags under my eyes? How about any other facial wrinkles? Would I still have been plus-sized? Would I have cellulite or stretch marks really bad? What if I still had ears instead of these audio receptor dishes?

I think the question that I entertain most is this: what man would find this shattered shell and organic fragments of what remains of a woman wrapped in machinery and synthetics attractive enough to date or marry? Actually, it’s not so much of a question if I am attractive…I believe that Techna has done a great job at making me look as feminine and humanlike as
possible; I catch guys staring at me all the time. But it’s overtly obvious that most people find me intimidating…especially men; some of them have flat out told me that they are scared of me. And quite honestly, I don’t blame them. Can I even still have sex?!? I mean…I am still rather soft in some places and I do still have lady parts down there…even if they are
completely synthetic. And if I can…would it be pleasurable for all parties involved? Would I even be a good girlfriend?
I still have a hard time being warm and relatable at times…and cybernetics or not, I’ve never been much of an overly emotional girly-girl anyways! However, I am still a woman…and sometimes I just want to be held, loved, and treated like a woman instead of having to be an ultra badass cyborg warrior chick 24/7. I don’t always want to be Commander Athena
the “War Goddess” …I just want to be Raina sometimes.
More and more frequently I do find ‘Raina’ dominating over my cold, logical, and oft annoying onboard data programming that comes with being a prototype bio-synthetic combat cyborg unit. At least over time I have been able to get back those moments of clarity where I can just say fuck these cybernetics and embrace my humanity for a while, or what’s left of it at
least. There was a point early when I was first rescued from Cybertech’s control where talking to me was like trying to
have a conversation with a toaster because my organic brain was so atrophied from being virtually dormant for about the last eight years. To my defense, they implanted microchips in my brain back in the military when I initially underwent the augmentation procedure that didn’t allow me to have strong emotional displays or
remorse. Plus it didn’t help that I was under very strict programming as an Elite sentinel…at that point I might as
well been a robot! I even talked like one for the first few months after I was saved from Cybertech! Techna removed all of that from my brain when she gave me this body…it’s has taken almost a year for my personality to come
back, and even then I’m still told by those closest to me that I can be a rather cold and detached ice queen at times.
But I’ve never exactly been a social butterfly or Miss Personality anyways, thanks to my introverted upbringing.
It took a while for the DFA to initially wear off and for the memories of my life before Cybertech to finally come back. Even then I’m still fighting it, as there are some things that I can’t fully remember…that’s another reason why Techna has me in the therapy sessions. Sometimes I welcome the illogical thoughts and allow for myself to get lost in them and daydream for as long as I can before my ODP tries to override my emotions and take control again. While it’s still a daily internal struggle that I have to endure, at least I do have control of my own free will again…I have to learn how to think in tandem with my ODP instead of letting it take complete control and negating my ‘illogical’ human side. Sometimes I completely ignore my ODP and at times I let it take the lead; I’ve been a free will cyborg long enough now to know that sometimes all of that logical stuff, exact calculations, trajectories, and such that the computer side of my brain has processed has a very small margin of error and comes in quite handy…especially in a firefight.

In our therapy sessions designed to help me stay in touch with my humanity, I ask Techna many of these questions. In response, she has often asked me why I continue to live this way if it seems that I’m regretful about how my life has turned out. She has offered to upload a personality program which would basically make me forget that approximately eighty five percent of my body is mechanical or synthetic…or the opposite where I would in essence be once again controlled by my cold, logical ODP. She doesn’t ask me to be a bitch or anything…she can be a smartass when she wants to be…but she actually says that it’s good that I’m contemplating life in such a way and asking questions. Humans have pondered the meaning of life far before cybernetics ever existed. I think that she asks her counter questions to remind me just who I am and that there is still an untamable human soul that inhabits this bio-synthetic cyborg body. I’d say that it’s working for the most part.

And sometimes…I must say that the temptation to just have her turn my brain off and let the programming just take over is great and very tempting. I’m a Bionically Enhanced Cyborg Agent for Daedalus…a B.E.C.A. That’s just a snazzy way of saying that I’m an intergalactic mercenary bounty hunter for the good guys…my prime objectives range from seeking out whatever target I’m assigned and either bring them to justice or eliminate them assassination style depending on the contract. Sometimes I’m sent on bodyguard missions, sometimes I’m sent on rescue missions, sometimes I’m simply the transporter of important documents, files, bytes of data, or whatever thing that needs delivering that the contractor doesn’t want to ship via UPS for some reason. Honestly, I don’t need a sunny personality to be a glorified skip tracer…I could opt to have the control microchips implanted in my databanks and brain and just be done with it. I’m not the only cyborg with this struggle, as statistics show that most rehabilitated cyborgs that have been under the strict influence of programming with less than fifty percent of their original organics remaining either choose to have the personality chips implanted, choose to separate themselves from their humanity and embrace their machine side…or they go crazy and kill themselves because they just can’t adjust to either side.

If I wanted to kill myself, I would’ve done so a long time ago…and believe me, I’ve contemplated suicide several times over the course of my life. But that would be a cowardly way out. I’ve come to the conclusion that while I may not be a ‘normal’ organic, nor will I ever be, I am still human. I would much rather for someone to put a high caliber gun to my head and blow the rest of my brains out before I just give up on my life and be a prisoner within my own mind again. Commander Raina Elizabeth Hunter would cease to exist at that point; all you’d have would be a robot with a few organic bits named Athena.

I’m a fighter…a soldier; always have been. I took an oath and vowed to uphold my duty to the best of my abilities and I’ve decided for better or for worse that’s what I’m gonna do until I cease to function any longer. I can sit here and daydream all day, questioning every single thing in my life and wonder for days ‘what if’…but what good would that do? Fact is
I can’t change the past…but I can change the future. And so, that’s what I’ll do…I’ll make sure that there’s a safe future for that kid out there that’s just trying to be ‘normal.’
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Update 3/22/15 Did a nice little revamp to this one all
over...her and Nikki's designs were too similar. I really miss Simone's
old design and decided that since Simone originally came from Raina
that I would recombine them somewhat. I darkened her skin even more to
reflect that she's multi-racial and kept the dark red hair. I took away
a few of the facial cybernetics b/c things were just a bit too
busy...plus I wanted to let some of her beauty show through without
circuitry and cybernetics everywhere! I also tried to tone down the
sensuality a bit, as I would rather for Raina to come across as a badass
first and foremost rather than being sexy.

I've pretty much
gone back to the drawing board with Raina's storyline to where she's a
major player in the grand scheme of things. Still trying to figure some
things out, but I'm talking like major as in on the same level that
Sapphira and Nikki are! She is one of my oldest OC's, and even then
I've also added elements from another OC of mine that's been around for
over 20 years now. (I never really posted any pics of said character
here on DA though.) I'm still playing with the idea of her having
several different looks, as in this is her default look/body and perhaps
some of her other more recent revamps would featured her with more of a
heavy duty armored body for heavy combat.

And...I'm playing with
the idea of her possibly being the estranged mother to one of the other
gals; most likely Sapphira.

-The MGMT

So, recently I've decided that I'm gonna stop trying to make my "magnum opus" which...in my mind at least...would become the next cult hit sensation on the internet. I realize that I've been second and third guessing all decisions that I make in regards to my work to in hopes that more people will like and accept it. And I've finally figured out that has been doing nothing but placing a crazy amount of stress on me to "create something epic" rather than just enjoy the creative process and create for myself first and foremost.

I've been sketching a lot lately, trying to make it a daily habit on the journey to constantly improve my technique and skill. Plus, I see that I can quickly (yet crudely) articulate any random ideas on the pad and begin to bring them to life. Raina has been my subject quite a bit in my sketching adventures and it's past time for her to receive a revamp...not just a revamp, but I've basically gone back to the drawing board. After several sketches and much brainstorming, I doodled some ideas for her updated look...I would say new, but basically all I did was take some of the design elements from Simone's old design , and another older character of mine named Athena (I've got quite of few old drawings of this character that I've never even posted here on DA dating back to the early 90's) mixed them with Raina's recent look , and added a dash of .

If you read the story, you'll see that things are MUCH different...for one, she's no longer a metahuman crimes cybercop. I put her in that scenario so that she could fit into the whole Angel Falls thing several years ago when I was still active there. However, I've haven't really had much to contribute to her progression since then, and being that she's one of my oldest OC's, I didn't want her to just fall by the wayside so I decided that it was time to repackage her nearly from scratch. Speaking of Angel Falls, I miss the creative wave that I was able to ride when I was actively posting stories and such for that group and I want it back. I want to do the story with Sapphira, but I've made that overly complicated and such. For now, I want to do something that would be basic, yet engaging where I'm not confusing myself with a whole lot of plot. So I made Raina more of a bounty hunter/mercenary type of character...she gets a mission, she carries it out to completion, and so on. She can battle Scarlette, or Sataria, or whoever...anything goes!

It's funny how things come around full circle, as Simone was created as a spin off to Raina's character. In my character merging frenzy that I've been doing in the past year or so, I've decided to re-combine the two. I've always liked Simone's struggle with her cyborg side vs. her human side and thought that would make for a deeper story than just being a warrior. Raina had a really deep past that I devised and thought that the mixing of the two character's stories would work well.

So allow me to reintroduce Commander Raina Elizabeth Hunter aka Athena!!!!

Original mature version is here(NSFW) mr-marcus-81.deviantart.com/ar…

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Sometimes I wish that things were completely different.
I always loved those ‘choose your own adventure’ books growing up in school; if you picked the ‘wrong’ path, you could always turn back and choose the other option until you got to the ‘happy ending.’ How cool would it be if life were like that? I’d definitely go back and do things a bit differently, especially the part where I basically signed my whole life away
and…at the time…unknowingly traded in my humanity to be some kind of science project for the rest of my life. But alas, life’s not like that at all and hindsight is 20/20 as they say. In retrospect, I’ve never really been what most would consider ‘normal.’
As part of my social re-acquaintance therapy to help me stay in touch with my humanity, one of my favorite things to do is to go to places where there is lots of life happening…say like a park or a mall…and watch normal people live life normally; usually from a safe distance of course. While watching, I sometimes fantasize what it would have been like if I was fortunate enough to have lived a ‘normal’ life. What if my mom didn’t die when I was a toddler and she was in my life at least long enough to teach me how to be a lady? Daddy would go on and on at just how wonderful of a woman she was, and how much I reminded him of her. And speaking of my dad, what if he didn’t get sucked into the downward spiral of gambling, drug abuse, and addiction that caused our lives to come crashing down?

I like to think about if I had grown up with a wealthy and famous dad and didn’t have to struggle much in life. I wonder how life would’ve been without eating ramen noodles, pork n beans, PBJ sandwiches, and Vienna sausages on a rotating basis because that’s all he could afford for us to eat. I wonder what would’ve it have been like if I had grown up in that beautiful mansion that we lived in before the bank repo’ed it because my dad couldn’t pay his taxes thanks in part to his destructive habits instead of growing up in a two bedroom roach motel of an apartment. What if I wasn’t the shy, tall, overweight, and awkward looking gal that sat in the back of the class and hardly said anything? Would my classmates still have picked on me so bad? Would I have had more friends?

What if my turbulent adolescence and teenage years weren’t so turbulent? Would some guy have asked me to the prom so that I didn’t have to go as the third wheel with one of my friends and her boyfriend? What if I didn’t have to experience the triple whammy of having my best friend on the face of the planet move away, watching my dad die right in front of me, and getting into a huge fight with my drunken coke-addict bitch of a stepmother who verbally and emotionally tormented me on a daily basis…where I literally knocked her into a coma with a baseball bat. What if she didn’t haunt my dreams and give me nightmares well into my adult years? Not trying to brag, but I’m quite amazed at how I made it through without committing suicide or just going bonkers. My youth was depressing at best…and it didn’t get much better as an adult.

I sometimes wish that instead of go to the military straight out of high school, maybe I would’ve been able to find a way to go to college or at least a community college or vocational school. I could’ve gotten a degree in physical therapy or philosophy or something that I wouldn’t have been able to actually find a decent job in. Maybe I would’ve met and fell in love with a nice guy who would have ended up being my college sweetheart…we would’ve dated for several years, then gone on to get married, have a few kids, a dog and a cat, maybe a nice house in the suburbs, and lived a nice and happy life. You know…the whole American dream thing. Hell, it didn’t even have to be the whole picture book American dream…I could’ve still gone to the military, served my four years, and gotten out to either go to school on the G.I. bill or use my military credentials to go work some civilian job somewhere. That’s if I wouldn’t have volunteered myself for the supersoldier program!
Quite often I just wish that I would’ve become a ‘normal’ woman. I guess that just wasn’t in the cards for
me. If things were different…I can’t help but wonder just where I’d be now. Would I have still ended up going through the crazy series of major life events where I would somehow end up an Amazon-sized experimental military bionically
enhanced supersoldier and eventually earning the rank of First Class Commander? Well actually, those years were some of the best of my life. I finally found what I was good at and what I believe I was put here on this Earth to do…things
finally started to seem as close to ‘normal’ as they had ever been. I was respected and loved despite the fact
that I can be a hardass at times, and it was then when I was given the nickname ‘Athena’…the War Goddess because of my real heavy rep on the battlefield. But what if things didn’t fall apart from there? And I would I have cross paths
and been reunited with my estranged best friend that moved away back in high school, only to be betrayed by her and set up to be ambushed, watch my entire unit slaughtered before being nearly killed myself, captured, and then
extensively turned into an evil Elite cyborg sentinel programmed against my will trapped inside my own mind while I was powerless in controlling my actions? Would it have led to me then being rescued several years later, deprogrammed, given a new body, and turned glorified mercenary bounty hunter for the good guys?
Sometimes it’s the little things in life that organics take for granted that I miss and ponder just what would it be like if I were ‘normal.’ I tell Techna in our therapy sessions that it’s pretty damn hard to stay acclimated with my human side when I’m constantly reminded that I’m not a ‘normal’ human anymore…physically at least! Like, for instance…most organics don’t have to worry about waiting to be reassembled and having fifty million wires and plugs to disconnect from my frame as soon as I they wake up. ‘Normal’ humans will most likely never know what it feels like to have their head detached and reattached from their body; or they’ll never know what it’s like to look at your headless body as it’s being worked on while floating in a stasis tube as a disembodied head with tons of tubes jammed and plugged into every orifice and dataport interface jack…this is something I experience quite frequently.

And even on the days where Techna doesn’t completely dismantle me for repairs, there are still not-so-subtle reminders that I’m more machine than organic now. There are times where I go weeks without my cyberarmor being removed and other than my face and exposed fingers I forget that there are still some parts of me that at least look remotely organic…I didn’t have this luxury under Cybertech’s control as I was hardly recognizable as a humanoid anymore. I was lucky to even see my face some days back then with all of the hardware and machinery that they loaded me up with! Techna wonders why didn’t they do a full-body prosthesis and just implant my brain into an all new entirely cyber-synthetic body? And even if am able to go around without my armor plugged directly into my body, I often feel more naked without it than I do when I’m actually naked…if that makes any sense. Or if I do start to get comfortable in my own ‘skin’, something will happen in battle where I lose a limb or I get a hole blown through my abdomen and at the site of the dangling wires and sparking circuitry I’m quickly reminded that said ‘skin’ and muscles are synthetic and merely for aesthetic purposes.
Well, at least they can regenerate themselves and my self-repair function will activate if the damage isn’t too severe…plus my pain editor implants are a God send!!! I guess that’s one advantage that I have over organics!

Oddly enough, I miss other random little things…like waking up in the morning and going straight to the bathroom to take that first morning’s pee. Or waking with an extreme case of bed head, rather than having to put on my synthetic wig to cover up my permanently bald circuitry riddled noggin in the front and the reinforced titanium alloy cranial
casing and skull plates in the back. My hair looks, acts, and feels like real hair and covers up my chrome dome quite
nicely…it’s even the same shade of dark red that it was naturally…but still it’s not the same. If I did still have
my natural head of hair, would I have split ends or dandruff?

Sometimes I stare in the mirror at myself before I put my wig on and I fall into a trance while staring into the reflection of my electric blue bionic optical sensors. I often perform an X-ray scan on my head, looking past the completely metal cranial skull casting to see the chunk of brain that’s some of the last actual original organic components that’s left of me pre-cybernation. I miss how the world looks without several different energy signature readings, or constant scans being performed on everyone and everything, my vision automatically zooming in or panning out to get the clearest possible HD visual of whatever I’m focusing on, or of course my obligatory targeting system! They didn’t glow or were capable of all of
the cool stuff that my bionic optical implants are, but I miss my natural blue eyes.
At times I wonder just how I would look now without the cybernetics, synthetics, and nanotechnology that are constantly regenerating my organic tissues and keep me looking relatively young…I am pushing fifty even though it looks like I haven’t aged a day past twenty-five. I know that I’m not that old yet, but would I have started to develop crow’s feet or bags under my eyes? How about any other facial wrinkles? Would I still have been plus-sized? Would I have cellulite or stretch marks really bad? What if I still had ears instead of these audio receptor dishes?

I think the question that I entertain most is this: what man would find this shattered shell and organic fragments of what remains of a woman wrapped in machinery and synthetics attractive enough to date or marry? Actually, it’s not so much of a question if I am attractive…I believe that Techna has done a great job at making me look as feminine and humanlike as
possible; I catch guys staring at me all the time. But it’s overtly obvious that most people find me intimidating…especially men; some of them have flat out told me that they are scared of me. And quite honestly, I don’t blame them. Can I even still have sex?!? I mean…I am still rather soft in some places and I do still have lady parts down there…even if they are
completely synthetic. And if I can…would it be pleasurable for all parties involved? Would I even be a good girlfriend?
I still have a hard time being warm and relatable at times…and cybernetics or not, I’ve never been much of an overly emotional girly-girl anyways! However, I am still a woman…and sometimes I just want to be held, loved, and treated like a woman instead of having to be an ultra badass cyborg warrior chick 24/7. I don’t always want to be Commander Athena
the “War Goddess” …I just want to be Raina sometimes.
More and more frequently I do find ‘Raina’ dominating over my cold, logical, and oft annoying onboard data programming that comes with being a prototype bio-synthetic combat cyborg unit. At least over time I have been able to get back those moments of clarity where I can just say fuck these cybernetics and embrace my humanity for a while, or what’s left of it at
least. There was a point early when I was first rescued from Cybertech’s control where talking to me was like trying to
have a conversation with a toaster because my organic brain was so atrophied from being virtually dormant for about the last eight years. To my defense, they implanted microchips in my brain back in the military when I initially underwent the augmentation procedure that didn’t allow me to have strong emotional displays or
remorse. Plus it didn’t help that I was under very strict programming as an Elite sentinel…at that point I might as
well been a robot! I even talked like one for the first few months after I was saved from Cybertech! Techna removed all of that from my brain when she gave me this body…it’s has taken almost a year for my personality to come
back, and even then I’m still told by those closest to me that I can be a rather cold and detached ice queen at times.
But I’ve never exactly been a social butterfly or Miss Personality anyways, thanks to my introverted upbringing.
It took a while for the DFA to initially wear off and for the memories of my life before Cybertech to finally come back. Even then I’m still fighting it, as there are some things that I can’t fully remember…that’s another reason why Techna has me in the therapy sessions. Sometimes I welcome the illogical thoughts and allow for myself to get lost in them and daydream for as long as I can before my ODP tries to override my emotions and take control again. While it’s still a daily internal struggle that I have to endure, at least I do have control of my own free will again…I have to learn how to think in tandem with my ODP instead of letting it take complete control and negating my ‘illogical’ human side. Sometimes I completely ignore my ODP and at times I let it take the lead; I’ve been a free will cyborg long enough now to know that sometimes all of that logical stuff, exact calculations, trajectories, and such that the computer side of my brain has processed has a very small margin of error and comes in quite handy…especially in a firefight.

In our therapy sessions designed to help me stay in touch with my humanity, I ask Techna many of these questions. In response, she has often asked me why I continue to live this way if it seems that I’m regretful about how my life has turned out. She has offered to upload a personality program which would basically make me forget that approximately eighty five percent of my body is mechanical or synthetic…or the opposite where I would in essence be once again controlled by my cold, logical ODP. She doesn’t ask me to be a bitch or anything…she can be a smartass when she wants to be…but she actually says that it’s good that I’m contemplating life in such a way and asking questions. Humans have pondered the meaning of life far before cybernetics ever existed. I think that she asks her counter questions to remind me just who I am and that there is still an untamable human soul that inhabits this bio-synthetic cyborg body. I’d say that it’s working for the most part.

And sometimes…I must say that the temptation to just have her turn my brain off and let the programming just take over is great and very tempting. I’m a Bionically Enhanced Cyborg Agent for Daedalus…a B.E.C.A. That’s just a snazzy way of saying that I’m an intergalactic mercenary bounty hunter for the good guys…my prime objectives range from seeking out whatever target I’m assigned and either bring them to justice or eliminate them assassination style depending on the contract. Sometimes I’m sent on bodyguard missions, sometimes I’m sent on rescue missions, sometimes I’m simply the transporter of important documents, files, bytes of data, or whatever thing that needs delivering that the contractor doesn’t want to ship via UPS for some reason. Honestly, I don’t need a sunny personality to be a glorified skip tracer…I could opt to have the control microchips implanted in my databanks and brain and just be done with it. I’m not the only cyborg with this struggle, as statistics show that most rehabilitated cyborgs that have been under the strict influence of programming with less than fifty percent of their original organics remaining either choose to have the personality chips implanted, choose to separate themselves from their humanity and embrace their machine side…or they go crazy and kill themselves because they just can’t adjust to either side.

If I wanted to kill myself, I would’ve done so a long time ago…and believe me, I’ve contemplated suicide several times over the course of my life. But that would be a cowardly way out. I’ve come to the conclusion that while I may not be a ‘normal’ organic, nor will I ever be, I am still human. I would much rather for someone to put a high caliber gun to my head and blow the rest of my brains out before I just give up on my life and be a prisoner within my own mind again. Commander Raina Elizabeth Hunter would cease to exist at that point; all you’d have would be a robot with a few organic bits named Athena.

I’m a fighter…a soldier; always have been. I took an oath and vowed to uphold my duty to the best of my abilities and I’ve decided for better or for worse that’s what I’m gonna do until I cease to function any longer. I can sit here and daydream all day, questioning every single thing in my life and wonder for days ‘what if’…but what good would that do? Fact is
I can’t change the past…but I can change the future. And so, that’s what I’ll do…I’ll make sure that there’s a safe future for that kid out there that’s just trying to be ‘normal.’
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Update 3/22/15 Did a nice little revamp to this one all
over...her and Nikki's designs were too similar. I really miss Simone's
old design and decided that since Simone originally came from Raina
that I would recombine them somewhat. I darkened her skin even more to
reflect that she's multi-racial and kept the dark red hair. I took away
a few of the facial cybernetics b/c things were just a bit too
busy...plus I wanted to let some of her beauty show through without
circuitry and cybernetics everywhere! I also tried to tone down the
sensuality a bit, as I would rather for Raina to come across as a badass
first and foremost rather than being sexy.

I've pretty much
gone back to the drawing board with Raina's storyline to where she's a
major player in the grand scheme of things. Still trying to figure some
things out, but I'm talking like major as in on the same level that
Sapphira and Nikki are! She is one of my oldest OC's, and even then
I've also added elements from another OC of mine that's been around for
over 20 years now. (I never really posted any pics of said character
here on DA though.) I'm still playing with the idea of her having
several different looks, as in this is her default look/body and perhaps
some of her other more recent revamps would featured her with more of a
heavy duty armored body for heavy combat.

And...I'm playing with
the idea of her possibly being the estranged mother to one of the other
gals; most likely Sapphira.

-The MGMT

So, recently I've decided that I'm gonna stop trying to make my "magnum opus" which...in my mind at least...would become the next cult hit sensation on the internet. I realize that I've been second and third guessing all decisions that I make in regards to my work to in hopes that more people will like and accept it. And I've finally figured out that has been doing nothing but placing a crazy amount of stress on me to "create something epic" rather than just enjoy the creative process and create for myself first and foremost.

I've been sketching a lot lately, trying to make it a daily habit on the journey to constantly improve my technique and skill. Plus, I see that I can quickly (yet crudely) articulate any random ideas on the pad and begin to bring them to life. Raina has been my subject quite a bit in my sketching adventures and it's past time for her to receive a revamp...not just a revamp, but I've basically gone back to the drawing board. After several sketches and much brainstorming, I doodled some ideas for her updated look...I would say new, but basically all I did was take some of the design elements from Simone's old design , and another older character of mine named Athena (I've got quite of few old drawings of this character that I've never even posted here on DA dating back to the early 90's) mixed them with Raina's recent look , and added a dash of .

If you read the story, you'll see that things are MUCH different...for one, she's no longer a metahuman crimes cybercop. I put her in that scenario so that she could fit into the whole Angel Falls thing several years ago when I was still active there. However, I've haven't really had much to contribute to her progression since then, and being that she's one of my oldest OC's, I didn't want her to just fall by the wayside so I decided that it was time to repackage her nearly from scratch. Speaking of Angel Falls, I miss the creative wave that I was able to ride when I was actively posting stories and such for that group and I want it back. I want to do the story with Sapphira, but I've made that overly complicated and such. For now, I want to do something that would be basic, yet engaging where I'm not confusing myself with a whole lot of plot. So I made Raina more of a bounty hunter/mercenary type of character...she gets a mission, she carries it out to completion, and so on. She can battle Scarlette, or Sataria, or whoever...anything goes!

It's funny how things come around full circle, as Simone was created as a spin off to Raina's character. In my character merging frenzy that I've been doing in the past year or so, I've decided to re-combine the two. I've always liked Simone's struggle with her cyborg side vs. her human side and thought that would make for a deeper story than just being a warrior. Raina had a really deep past that I devised and thought that the mixing of the two character's stories would work well.

So allow me to reintroduce Commander Raina Elizabeth Hunter aka Athena!!!!

Original mature version is here(NSFW) mr-marcus-81.deviantart.com/ar…