"Hm..." Roland frowned, closing his eyes and leaning back to recall all those details. It felt like years ago, even though it had really been such a small amount of time. "It started when he and his comrades arrived in the real world. One of them was unfortunate enough to land in my territory, and Heat landed in the territory of an opposing faction, who also had control of Sera, the person who gave him that obsessive personality. The remaining members of his Tribe agreed to a trade; their comrade in exchange for doing some of my dirty work for me."

Roland surprised himself in how frank he was about that. Back then, he was a terrible person, to say that he'd kidnapped and blackmailed Embryon was not stretching the truth at all. But that was another world ago, another lifetime. "...how little I knew that their sense of 'honor' was such that it shook me out of my paranoia and made me join with them more directly. Regardless, eventually we made it to that opposing faction's laboratory, where Heat was defending Sera. He very nearly killed me in that fight."

Which, of course, made him chuckle softly. "Not exactly a warm welcome. But he'd just been told what he was, that his entire life was a lie and the people he'd thought he could trust had betrayed him on fundamental levels. So, when offered an alternative option, he took it. ...sorry for being so long-winded, by the way."