Reed

Reed is the general of chemical's second military division. He has a complicated relationship to Delmar whom he spent years trying to capture.

Early years and basic education
Reed was born as a puma far west of New Devantos. At age 10 he was discovered in a standard routine scout mission and brought to New Devantos. Here he was put to the standard basic training and he learnt early about his advantages as he possessed one of the stronger elements. Everyone told him to aim for a high position so that he did. He spent a lot of time at studies and training and therefore also performed very well.

He took every opportunity he could to visit the chemical faction to prepare himself for his future career. The chemical soldiers advised him to get a real name as Fire wouldn't be a proper name for a chemical high rank. He took the name Reed as a reference for his particular red flames. The surname Johnson he took at random from a list of human sounding name suggestions at the Thermal/Mechanical reception desk. The soldiers also taught him about elemental strength, his advantages as a fire shifter and all their prejudices about weaker shifters.

After three years a newly discovered young ice shifter joins into their class. He introduces himself as Ice. The newcomer has a horrible human form comparing to the other students. Reed who's been told about the importance of elemental strength and a good human form from the chemical soldiers gets awkward from Ice’s bad human form. He makes a couple of pretty mean jokes about it but don't realize how badly he hurt Ice’s feelings. His friends on the other hand enjoyed the jokes and laughed about it. Ice got set on revenge and challenge Reed for a battle to prove he is not as weak as Reed had said. Reed takes the challenge and effectively defeats Ice.

Their conflict slowly escalates and Reed starts to plainly bully Ice. Ice soon changes his name to Delmar. The older they got the weirder Delmar starts to behave and the better bully victim he becomes. They often end up in brawls as Delmar tries to constantly prove he's not as worthless as Reed tells him. Since Reed is such a good student in difference from Delmar does Delmar often get the blame for their fights. Delmar also starts talking to himself so Reed and the other students starts to call him crazy.

Mentor period
After the basic training gets Reed accepted into the chemical faction without problem. With him his friend Magnesium also joins. Since his grades are so good and he already started to build a reputation he gets assigned as Maxine’s student. At first he's very happy to have Maxine as mentor, she's the oldest and most respected fire shifter well known for her strength. She does however turn out to be a ruthless mentor and she uses violence to try to beat the demon form out of Reed. Reed is however stubborn and don't easily give into the demon instincts as he's so full of himself. When the beating doesn't work she lock him up in one of the training halls without food and water. The only light he got is the light from his own red flames. Occasionally she comes down to yet again beat him up to make him shift by lack of energy and by despair. Her plan works and after a week manages Reed to shift into his titan form. He also tries to kill her in demonic rage as he started to hate her for her methods. Maxine is however a though opponent and Reed has no energy left. She beats him back into his animal form. Afterwards she tells him she's pleased with him and that if he wasn't so self-obsessed it would have gone easier. She also tells him how the war form shifting process works, after he's done it. With the new information he finds it easy to also shift into his demon form.

When Reed gets back out into the daylight he gets a lot of praise from his friends and others for mastering war from shifting so soon. He is proud of himself but has no idea that the other students have not been training under the same conditions. He thinks this is probably completely normal.

Reed's training continues, Maxine tells him to forget anything about himself and to strictly listen to orders instead. This is not something Reed is willing to do as he thinks Maxine is trying to turn him into a mindless soldier. As time goes by he starts to resist her more and more which result in her methods getting more and more violent. She even cut of his ears until he's learnt to transform them into human ears. Reed is slowly starting to realize the other students are not suffering from the same physical and psychological abuse he is.

Sometimes he runs into Delmar. Delmar acts weirder than ever and Reed takes out a lot of his frustration on him by beating him up, calling him names and telling him he's completely worthless and useless.

Reed is however still set on finishing his training and to advance in the chemical faction so he endures Maxine's training even though he constantly provokes Maxine just to piss her off. One day he encounters Shrapnel. Shrapnel tricks Reed into a fight and poisons him. Reed takes no offence by the incident and grow a respect for the weird librarian who defeated him so easily. He consider Shrapnel to be a new friend even though Shrapnel thinks Reed is an egocentric asshole. Shrapnel gives Reed the advice to use foul tricks against enemies stronger than himself in order to win.

Reed decides to use Shrapnel’s advice and decides to poison Maxine’s drink before the next training battle. Groggy Maxine realize it first on the floor. She gets really upset with him. She asks him why and he explain that he's only prepared himself for a certain win. Maxine is humiliated in front of the people watching at the balcony. She calls him a cheater and not worthy to belong to the Chemical faction if he has to rely on poison to defeat his foes. Unfortunately for Reed wasn't the poison strong enough and the effect wears off after a short while. Furious Maxine regains the control of her body and decides to punish her student. Maxine beats him up so badly he's on the brink of death. In her rage she forgets about the audience and several people runs for help from the faction leader Chemical as she's obviously going to kill Reed. Chemical stops it and release Reed from Maxine’s mentorship. He decides to finish Reeds training himself and take over the roll as Reeds mentor. Reed’s training was almost done and he's only student under Chemical for two months. But under that time teaches Chemical him mostly about common sense and respect.

Chemical career
Reed respects Chemical enormously and he becomes Reed's greatest idol. When his mentorship is over decides Reed to advance as high as possible in the chemical faction to take orders directly from Chemical. He's assigned as a soldier and works the required time as a low rank before he can advance. He takes several courses at the human university in Yhoctin as it's required a higher human education to advance. In Yochtin he learns to love beer, cars, rock and roll and coffee. He also way more relaxed about the studies and take a lot of time to enjoy the human student life.

When he gets back to Devantos is his self-confidence greater than ever. He continues to work as a soldier but now everyone tells him it's only a matter of time before he's promoted. Whenever he and Delmar runs into each other they start fighting. Delmar does his very best to provoke Reed and hurt his feelings but after Maxine’s training takes Reed shit from no one.

Except for the good reputation Reed got in the chemical faction he also got the reputation of being a big bully towards any weaker shifters outside faction. This doesn't bother him at all and he looks down at the weaker shifters as they often are the source of crimes and murders. Reed has also been fed with all the prejudices from the chemical shifters ever since he joined the society and takes them as the truth.

This reputation is though something that'll become an obstacle in his carrier as the chemical faction’s second in command Terra refuses to promote someone who can't behave towards weaker shifters. She put an ultimatum on Reed and tells him to apologize to anyone he's been bullying, especially Delmar, if he wants to be promoted.

Reed does a couple of lame attempts as he's not interested in apologizing at all. The first couple of attempts gets ignored by the ice shifter who now works as scout.

Delma does somehow finds out about the ultimatum, he humiliate Reed for it and refuse to accept his apology telling him he'll have to spend the rest of his days as a soldier, a nobody, that he don't deserve a higher rank. Delmar manages to provoke Reed into a demon fight in the middle the streets. Delmar smashes a couple of buildings before he flies off leaving Reed to face the consequences, knowing that Reed is unable to fly and won't be following.

Reed had no real reason to hate Delmar before this but now the ice shifter managed to completely ruin his dreams. He has to not only face the chemical faction for his actions but also the electrical faction for breaking several secrecy laws. For once does Reed get the blame as Delmar is completely gone. Chemical vouches for him and he get a minor punishment in comparison to what he should have gotten. But he can forget any talk of promotions. Chemical reminds him about his lessons about respect and common sense.

Reed has to start all over again working from the bottom. He’s fixed on working hard enough so he's deserving a high rank. He’s often more capable than his superiors but he don't complain. He starts to take mentorships for young fire shifters to pass his time and to make sure they won't become Maxine’s students. He’s a popular teacher and his students becomes very good soldiers. He spends much more time with his students than Maxine does and he never rushes someone's education taking it at their own pace.

Reed starts to mature and to actually understand the things Chemical taught him. He still looks down at weaker shifters but he respect those who makes themselves useful for the society. Sometimes he runs into Delmar who now is an outlaw, every time they run into each other he forget about the common sense, tries to capture his nemesis and to get revenge. Delmar is however an expert at slipping away.

After a few decades is Reed finally promoted as nobody thinks there's any reason left to keep him as a soldier. He slowly works upwards as Terra is still skeptical about him. Finally they meet properly and they turn out to get along pretty well. Terra is however a lot stricter than Chemical and she's fully aware of her rank even though her element strength is weaker than Reed’s. She starts to give him more and more missions and responsibilities as he's extremely honest, trustworthy and competent.

Reed is very pleased with everything and had almost forgotten about his outlaw nemesis. He keeps mentoring students since he enjoys it greatly and to keep stealing students from Maxine. Suddenly he starts to hear about a couple of mysterious murders on undiscovered shifters out in the wild. It’s mostly rumors from the scouts based on animal rumors but the culprit in the crimes seems to be no other than Delmar. Reed starts to ask Terra to go after him but Terra has no interest in having the disaster of the two them fighting in their war forms out on an open street repeated again so she refuses. On top of it all is there no evidence that Delmar is the culprit, there's only rumors. Reed continues to nag about it so she orders him to stop asking. Instead he decides to go after Delmar on his own without asking. When Terra realizes what he's doing she orders him to quit it or be degraded again. She forbids him to personally go after Delmar or send someone after him as long as he's lacking proof. Instead Reed starts to gather any information he can about the murders. He hands it all to Terra until she's so tired of it that she refuses to even look at it and order him to stop doing that as well. As Terra don't want Delmar’s files store Reed them in case they would come in handy. Those times Reed run into Delmar he beat him up since he can't arrest him. Delmar has effectively made himself a protective shield towards Reed without even knowing it himself.

When Reed turns 320 he finally manages to achieve his goal and becomes the general for the Chemical faction’s second military division. He takes great pride in this as he managed to restore his reputation and fulfil his dream. He tries to continue to take students but now Maxine often gets favoured as many see it improper for a general to mentor younglings.

As he’s working as a general he sometimes still ask Terra to go after Delmar, or at least let him send a squad after the criminal. To his big surprise she agrees on letting him send a squad after him to bring him in to interrogate him. But then Terra starts to question Reed to why Delmar turned out like this. She tells Reed that maybe if he hadn’t bullied him in the first place Delmar might have turned into a decent person. Terra does not directly blame Reed for turning Delmar into a criminal but she do imply it. Reed brushes it off as nonsense saying that Delmar’s insanity is not something he is guilty off. Terra’s words do however leave their traces and Reed starts to feel guilty about it, which only maddens him more.

The squad do bring Delmar in but the ice shifter denies all charges and is impossible to crack. They manages to pin him for a few minor crimes instead and Reed gets the pleasure of breaking every bone in his left arm and hand. They depart with the mutual promise to kill each other. After this do Terra tell Reed that unless he has any evidence that Delmar is actually killing shifters in the wild or if Reed wants to apologize for his actions in their youth he will leave Delmar alone.