Nero Grimm, District 1

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I am Iron Man
Has he lost his mind
Can he see or is he blind
Can he walk at all
Or if he moves will he fall

( N A M E ) Nero Sebastian Grimm
( A G E ) Eighteen
( G E N D E R ) Male
( D I S T R I C T / A R E A ) District One

Is he alive or dead
Has he thoughts
Within his head
We'll just pass him there
Why should we even care

( A P P E A R A N C E )

Tic tok. Tic tok. Tic tok. The sound is everywhere: twitching against my hands, echoing through my ears, and in the clockwork thud of my heart. My body is a workshop all its own, tinkering with its inner workings even when my hands are still. There are people who claim I'm attempting to turn myself into a living version of one of the mechanical toys I create, but they have it all backwards. I'm just stripping away the guise of false humanity my mother spent so many years parading me around in, as if simple skin could be enough to hide the life-force of secret cogs and gears spinning in the depths of my chest. This isn't me playacting a childish fantasy; I'm just trying to show the world what I'm made of.

Strips and tubes of metal grow from my scalp, sewn into dark dreadlocks of matted hair, like haywire electrical cords cut off from their power source. I am self-generating now. Gritty oranges pepper the tangles, the rust of age. Humans or machines, it makes no difference, we are all subject to the passage of time. There's no need to remind me that the brass and steel reinforcing my body doesn't make me indestructible, I remind myself of this each time I press my fingers to my pulse, dark eyes checking my heartbeat against the steady tick of seconds on my pocketwatch. Too fast or too slow and I will short-circuit. We all have our limits and mine come complete with an instruction manual.

He was turned to steel
In the great magnetic field
When he traveled time
For the future
Of mankind

( H I S T O R Y )

It has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover, as though attempting to reassure me while forgetting that reminding me of the repercussions of panicking is one of the few things that will inevitably send my pulse ratcheting up to danger levels. When you are remade as a machine, you are given new rules to follow. Blowing my temper could literally mean blowing a fuse — that can happen after the weak and fragile tissue of your organs has been replaced with steel and wires... an artificial heart. I don't remember when the doctors cracked my ribs open to rebuild me and my mother never liked to talk about it. Little boys in District One aren't supposed to have access to the kinds of technology that can turn them into the brothers of their toys, but there I was: Robot Boy.

I was given a pocket watch and told it was now as much a part of me as my teeth or blood and maybe I took those words a little too closely to heart. With one hand holding onto it's steady tick tick tick and the fingers of my other pressed against my pulse, I would match and measure the thuds that echoed in my veins. They had no choice except to run like clockwork. Maybe other children would have despised this way of life, but to me it felt like not only taking a step into the future, but my future. Artificial felt natural. And that thought opened my mind up to a whole new world, with ideas that reached far beyond that borders of District One and all the way to the Capitol.

When I found the letters, hidden in a drawer my mother thought I would never take an interest in, that's when I knew I was something more than a daydreamer. Of course the alterations to my body felt right; I was a displaced Capitolite, after all. Maybe the words — my father's words — scrawled across those pages never said it outright, but they spoke of the type of parties and frivolities that even District One could never achieve. Even now, those descriptions are seared into my memory, begging me to recreate them and claim what was always rightfully mine. People ask why the toys and trinkets I build in my workshop are encrusted with the kinds of precious gem stones usually reserved for the finest of jewelry, but I don't understand what they mean. I only wonder why their possessions aren't. Everything is meant to be bedazzled and full of spectacle, it shouldn't be worth your time otherwise. And, frankly, if you're going to take anyone's word on time, let me assure you with my whole heart, that it ought to be mine.

Nobody wants him
He just stares
At the world
Planning his vengeance
That he will soon unfold

( P E R S O N A L I T Y )

My mother told me my imagination was running away with me, that this idea I'd gotten into my head about being the illegitimate son of a Capitolite was no more real than my heart. Although I was too young to remember my life before the operation, I'm certain my mother loved me more before. It is only logical that the diminishing of familial love would go both ways. She has always been so ashamed of it, as if my humanity were being gilded away and my soul caged up in the metal like a backwards Pandora's box.

I can't say her theory is entirely wrong, not after I began turning my simple clockwork robots into complex machines of mass destruction. She blamed my deductions about my father on my "conspiracy theorist" tendencies, neglecting to acknowledge that I'm not so much a theorist as I am a man of perception and deduction. The mystery of my father was a far less difficult puzzle to piece together than the ones that led me to the decision to turn my workshop into a front for arms dealing. You see, no machine can function properly without a cause.

The Uprising is far more than a conspiracy theory. I may cater to the local gangs as a specialty purveyor of dazzling robotics that utilize razzmatazz as a distraction for their deadly detonations, but my sights are not set in true alignment with theirs on such petty wars for District domination. No, when the opportunity arises, I aim to lend my weapons and protection to a far more important cause. The Capitol. I will not stand by idly when rumors of overthrow are being whispered through the backstreets. The discovery of those letters gave me more than a father and a sense of self, they promised me a proper home.

Now the time is here
For Iron Man to spread fear
Vengeance from the grave
Kills the people
He once saved

( C O D E W O R D ) Odair
( F A C E C L A I M ) Kit Stølen

( C O M M E N T S / O T H E R )

Iron Man by Black Sabath

Random references to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams because I felt like it.

Nobody wants him
They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him
Now he has
His revenge

( T E X T ) 768789
( T H I N K I N G ) 9EA8A1
( O T H E R ) 756D5E
( S P E A K I N G ) B0522C
( O T H E R S P E A K I N G ) 73362B

Heavy boots of lead
Fills his victims
Full of dread
Running as fast as they can
Iron Man lives again