Iron Fly: Death on Wings
Continuing with this miniseries on the villains of Posthuman: Guardians vs PSION, it’s time you met one of the deadliest remorseless killers in the Posthuman world:
The Iron Fly
Tetsuo Umezu is an artist whose media are metal and flesh. Gifted with the posthuman ability to shape metals, he enjoys working with steel, copper, and gold. He hates bismuth, claiming it painful to manipulate. He weaves metals through his own body to create elegant, functional wings.
He’s also a serial killer who does similar things to others. He is devoid of empathy, yet soft spoken and almost grandfatherly in his demeanor. Iron Fly is so sinister that even PSION doesn’t want him. He’s no political freedom fighter; he’s an artist, and the murders are incidental to him.
I named him after several Tetsuos–the Tetsuo of AKIRA as well as Tetsuo: The Iron Man. Tetsu is Japanese for “iron,” after all. His last name is a tribute to Kazuo Umezu, a mangaka who was creating bizarre horror comics decades before Junji Ito (Uzumaki) or Kentaro Miura (Berserk).
You will meet the Iron Fly in Chapter 2 of Posthuman if you have one of the following criteria met by then: Leadership stat greater than 50%; Rebel stat less than 50%; or Resilience stat above 50%. During testing, nearly every play-through met at least one criterion above, but it’s not a freebie. Your character has to earn the privilege of interviewing this incarcerated killer.
I picture him as a regal, dignified, older Japanese man–someone like Ken Watanabe. For more of the madman side, Choi Min-sik (although he’s Korean). There’s a bit of Hannibal Lecter in there, of course. When he’s not incarcerated, and he’s using his wings, I imagine them looking delicate and filigree, though also razor sharp. Visual inspiration here comes from Archangel (Marvel), Iron Butterly (Milestone), and the decorative “wings” of Exodus (Marvel), plus the aforementioned Tetsuos.
