No kid really is, right? I'm a quick learner, though. I was born on the wrong side of the tracks in Atlanta, Georgia on April 22, 1968. My mother raised me by herself in this little, three-room, ramshackle place that I hesitate to call a house. My father? He was a Black Spiral Dancer, and apparently was pretty important back in Ireland, before he moved to the States. I never knew him.

Mom was Black Spiral Dancer kinfolk. I didn't know that until after my First Change, but even when I was young, I knew something was wrong with her. She worked the night shift at a diner, when she wasn't too high on meth or heroin to remember to go into work. I had two older brothers that looked just like her, right down to the dark hair, dark eyes, and the unhealthy look. I took after my father in more ways than one. I looked just like him and, at the age of 17, I changed just like him, too.

Before that, I was sorta normal, you know? I didn't have the problems fitting in that I hear a lot of Homid Dancers talk about. Me? I was always at the head of the class. Class president. Football. Boy scouts. Was real good at working within the rules to get what I wanted. Auspice coming out, I guess. My first change was a messy affair, though. I'd been feeling restless for weeks, like an animal in a cage. Finally, one night, I snapped. My first change was in the West End subway station, late at night, after a gang pushed me around. The Dancers got there while I was still dismembering the corpses. Life hasn't been the same since.

That first time in the Black Labyrinth is something I'll never forget. The Wyrm spoke to me, opened my eyes to truth I'd never seen before. Mahsstrac, the Urge Wyrm of Power, came to me and whispered promises to me, promises of Power within the tribe and within the human world. I feel him still. That others can't means they are beneath me. They just don't know it yet.

The first words I spoke when I was back among my tribe, after the Rite of the Black Spiral, were "zai zane", so by tradition, my new name was Zaizane. I was taught the laws and traditions of the tribe, sometimes brutally, but I learned quick, and soon I was assigned to a Pentex First Team. That was where I really learned to blend in with those around me. Sometimes my teammates sensed what I was, but other times I passed for human better than the fomori on the team. I learned to play the political game pretty well. I was in a retrieval team, so I got to see the executives and the scientists a lot more than most Dancers. Someone took a liking to me and transferred me to Special Projects full time.

Since then, I've learned even more about company politics. The ruthless kind. People learned real fucking quick not to get in my way. I think the bosses might suspect something, because they never turn their back to me, but hell, they gotta relax sometime, and when they do...Well, you get the picture. For now, I'm Director of Special Projects at Magadon, Inc's Los Angeles branch. We're breeding things that would make you shit your pants and we're coming up with ways to get the mutts out of our hair for good. I've done this kinda shit at Pentex subsidiaries all over the east coast. Maybe next time I'll ask to be assigned to a hospital. I love a hands-on approach.