B. Orchid (Character)

B. Orchid last edited by gravenraven on 12/26/23 11:35AM View full history

Origin

Orchid is a secret agent who went under cover at Ultratech to uncover its terrible crimes. She also enlisted in the Killer Instinct tournament to learn more information. Along the way she befriended with Jago, Thunder, Sabrewulf and eventually a reformed TJ Combo. She would also learn that Jago was her brother.

Together they managed to put the evil Eyedol back in Limbo, but were not successful in toppling Ultratech.

Creation

Black Orchid originally debuted in the video game Killer Instinct, and was immediately one of the popular characters within the game which would go on to spawn sequels and become a franchise. Killer Instinct would originally be published by Rare. Acclaim would publish a limited comic series adapting elements and characters from the game into a comic format, Orchid included.

History

Killer Instinct

B. Orchid is a secret agent, sent by an unknown group to investigate the mysterious disappearances that surround the Killer Instinct tournament. Her true identity and abilities are shrouded in secrecy. Extended Story For many years, Black Orchid has been among the code named elite of a professional spy organization working for the greater good of society. Her past remains hidden, including some things of which even she is unaware; she won't find out for some time yet that Jago is actually her brother. Realizing that clear evidence of Ultratech's crimes and dark ambition is proving impossible to come by, she eventually decides that the only way into the company is also the most dangerous: straight through the open front door. Once her superiors are persuaded of the necessity, she goes ahead and enters the tournament.

Ending

Escaping unscathed with vital information about the corrupt future plans of Ultratech, Orchid rushes back to report. Informing her superiors of Ultratech's evil intentions, they can now act in bringing about the destruction of the corruption presiding there.

Killer Instinct 2

Eyedol's death by Orchid’s hand freed massive energies, ripping UltraTech back in time. Now 2000 years in the past, Orchid must face a new challenge and an even greater foe.

The lethal secret agent remains as enigmatic as always. Had she been caught and detained in her infiltration of Ultratech, the authorities would eventually have exposed her as a valued asset of an international spy organization.

However, Orchid's role in the tournament and ultimate victory over the warlord Eyedol yielded some very unexpected results, leaving not only her but most of Ultratech trapped two millennia in the past with rather more urgent concerns on their hands.

Endings

Kill Sabrewulf but don't kill Jago

Gargos is defeated. The way stands clear for the forces of good to rid the world of Ultratech. Cursing Orchid as he is dying, Gargos reveals that Jago is her brother and they'd both soon be dead. Separated at birth, the orphaned brother and sister are reunited. A new fighting team has been formed.

Kill Jago and Sabrewulf

Gargos is defeated. The way stands clear for the forces of good to rid the world of Ultratech. With his dying breath, Gargos curses Orchid to the same fate that had befallen her brother Jago. She returns home, but her victory is hollow, for the rest of her life she mourns the loss of the brother she never knew.

Don't kill Jago or Sabrewulf

Gargos is defeated. The way stands clear for the forces of good to rid the world of Ultratech. Cursing Orchid as he is dying, Gargos reveals that Jago is her brother and they'd both soon be dead. Reaching beyond the grave, Gargos possesses Sabrewulf and attacks. But Jago slays the wolf and the siblings return home to a new life.

Kill Jago but don't kill Sabrewulf

Gargos is defeated. The way stands clear for the forces of good to rid the world of Ultratech. With his dying breath Gargos curses Orchid to the same fate that had befallen her brother Jago. His spirit possessing Sabrewulf in a last desperate act. Gargos attacks, taken by surprise, Orchid falls and Gargos has his vengeance.

Killer Instinct (2013)

"One step closer to flushing out UltraTech."

Paranoid, unstable, and disavowed from her agency, Orchid is determined to carry out her crusade against the dismantled organization, Ultratech. In war-torn Eastern Europe, she sets out to build an underground network that will prove Ultratech is still active.

Extended Story — "The Firecat's Summoning"

Orchid is the leader of an Eastern European spy ring known as the Disavowed. All of the members of this organization claim to have been wronged by Ultratech, and their goal is to bring down the megacorporation using sabotage, infiltration, industrial espionage and guerrilla warfare tactics.

An American by birth, Orchid started out her career in intelligence as an operative for the Special Warfare Department (SWD): a covert ops wing of Homeland Security. But after a deep cover operation inside Ultratech’s research and development branch—an operation during which several scientists died in a lab explosion—the SWD claimed that Orchid had become extremely unstable and paranoid.

She was disowned by Homeland Security, and accused of murdering her commanding officer. Orchid claimed that she had been framed by Ultratech, but she was branded a terrorist and forced to flee the country, making her way to the Carpathian Mountains. Using the skills taught to her by the SWD, she formed the Disavowed and started recruiting members, mainly from former Soviet states.

One must go back to Orchid’s childhood to discover the roots of her origins as an international spy. She was a military brat raised by her single father—a member of the elite Seal Team 6. From an early age Orchid showed signs of emotional instability and would fly into blind rages. In the sixth grade, while her father was away on a hostage rescue mission to free aid workers taken in Pakistan, she locked herself in a room at school after being taunted by some kids, and started a fire that nearly burned down the building, blaming it on something she called “the Firecat.”

She was placed in a juvenile detention facility for a month and given psychiatric evaluations until her father returned. When he found out what had happened he immediately went AWOL, taking his daughter to an isolated cabin in the mountains that he had set up as a survivalist compound. The Firecat, he knew, was real. He had once seen his late mother—Orchid’s grandmother—conjure a flaming beast in a fit of rage. He knew that during World War II his mother had volunteered as a test subject for a secret military study: Project Aries 9. Orchid’s strange power had apparently been passed down to her from her grandmother’s DNA.

He started training Orchid in hand-to-hand combat, firearms and the melee weapons he’d learned to wield on a military base in the Philippines: the spring batons. He knew that he had to teach his daughter to control her rage and channel it, because he feared that either Ultratech or the government would try to use her and her hidden power as a tool. He set her seemingly impossible tasks—both mental and physical—and helped her find the hidden resources inside herself to overcome these challenges. Orchid learned to run for an entire day without stopping, or to shoot the sword off a Suicide King playing card from five hundred yards with a sniper’s rifle.

The most important aspect of the training, however, was teaching her to summon the Firecat. Anger, her father explained, was a powerful emotion, but it was useless in battle. A soldier had to be laser-focused on simultaneously killing the enemy and staying alive. And to do this they had to practice emergency conditioning—mentally preparing for any kind of combat situation through pre-visualization. He had her create a mental trigger for calling the Firecat, and rather than associating it with something bad like rage or humiliation, he told her to think of something that made her feel proud and strong. Orchid followed his advice and felt her hands start to glow with energy, and then the Firecat burst forth, obliterating an old car that sat in the compound. It was a joyous feeling.

They stayed in the cabin for two years, training in the mountains and woods, until the Special Warfare Department finally tracked them down, sending an overwhelming force. Orchid’s father was too valuable to be put in a military prison, and so he was coerced to return to his duties in exchange for Orchid’s freedom. The last thing he told his daughter was to only use her hidden power unless it was a life or death situation. Orchid was placed in the care of a military foster family while her father was sent on a covert mission to Afghanistan. After a year he was killed in a suicide bombing attack, and his body was not recovered. Orchid never had a chance to tell him that when she called upon the Firecat she was thinking of him—imagining his wise and intense eyes peering into her own.

Orchid was devastated, spiraling into a dark depression. As a teenager she often got into trouble, and ended up running away from her foster family and living on the streets. After being arrested for arson she was questioned in jail by a woman named Major Weaver. She was a commander from the Special Warfare Department who claimed that she had been monitoring Orchid for years. Weaver told Orchid that she had incredible potential, and that she should follow in her father’s footsteps as a patriot and a warrior. She invited Orchid to join the SWD, telling her that she would be able to help avenge her father’s death, which was not caused by a suicide bomber, but rather from an Ultratech drone sold to enemy combatants. And then she gave Orchid a partially destroyed journal as a sign of good faith, telling her that it had belonged to Orchid’s father.

Joining the SWD seemed like the best path at the time, and Orchid plunged headlong into the intense training. Besides courses in espionage and killing techniques, she was taught how to speak Chinese and Russian fluently. She also became an expert in HAHO (high-altitude/high-opening) parachute jumping. In her spare moments she pored over her father’s partially destroyed journal, gleaning from it anything that she could about the mystery surrounding his death. The journal revealed a startling secret: Orchid had a younger brother—the result of her father’s affair with a foreign aid worker whom he had saved in Pakistan. She couldn’t pronounce his name properly—Jacob—and called him “Jay-go” which made him laugh. The woman had disappeared in the foothills of the Himalayas soon after their child was born, and Jacob had not been able to track down her or the baby. He wasn’t present during the birth, but he knew that it was a boy.

Over the next decade Orchid successfully completed missions in Chechnya, Russia, China and Africa for the SWD. During these operations she kept finding clues that linked an international terrorist cabal to Ultratech, but these puzzle pieces were few and far between. Finally, Major Weaver assigned Orchid to a deep cover operation at Ultratech itself, posing as a research scientist. Orchid heard whispers of a program called “the Pinnacle Protocol,” and discovered fragments of information pointing toward an alien crash site. Her greatest and most agonizing revelation, however, was finding out that key members of the Special Warfare Department were under the control of the AI known as ARIA. But Orchid took too many risks and her cover got blown. Surrounded by a horde of Fulgore units, she summoned the Firecat, setting fire to a lab and causing a massive explosion. She escaped the facility in the chaos.

Orchid went directly to Major Weaver and reported her findings, but the woman who’d recruited her told her that she was paranoid and delusional, dismissing her from the SWD. Orchid left Weaver’s office in despair, only to see on a news report later that night that Weaver, along with her entire section, had been murdered in a bombing. And Orchid was the prime suspect. So she fled the country, gaining passage on a Russian cargo ship. Utilizing all of the survival skills taught to her by her father, and the espionage training of the SWD, it wasn’t long before Orchid started the Disavowed and recruited its first members.

Using technical data that she’d stolen from Ultratech, she created the electrified spring batons that became her trademark. During one of her covert missions in Europe she met the monster hunter Maya and formed a friendship. Orchid also came into contact with a young Native American named Eagle. He messaged the Disavowed through a forum run by cyber dissidents, trying to find someone to help him bring down Ultratech. Orchid brought him into the spy ring and, after deciding that he was legitimate and not a plant, sent him on a mission to the Killer Instinct tournament.

After Eagle was reported killed in the tournament, she took on the persona of Black Orchid, and entered the tournament herself in the hopes of finding out what happened to the young fighter. She was nearly killed by Jago before she realized that this warrior-monk from the Himalayas—who had the same eyes as her late father Jacob—was her younger sibling. After the tournament Orchid and Jago joined forces with TJ Combo, vowing to bring down Ultratech together. And Orchid and Jago promised each other that they would uncover the secret about what had happened to their father, as well as the reason why Jago had been abandoned at the temple.

The trio of Orchid, Jago and TJ joined the monster hunter Maya at the headquarters of the Night Guard in the Andes, hoping to form a plan of attack against ARIA. But this seemingly hidden outpost was soon invaded by an Ultratech battle force, and the companions were surrounded by a massive number of Riptors and Fulgore units. Orchid stared into the face of death and was just about to call upon the Firecat for one last time, but suddenly the enemy called off the attack, leaving a stunned Orchid to wonder who or what had stopped the Ultratech army from wiping them out.

As she contemplated her last several encounters with Ultratech, Orchid realized that she had spent too much time forcing direct confrontation with her enemies. To improve as a fighter, she’ll need to embrace her skills as a spy and focus on the element of surprise.

Endings

Spare Sadira, ULTRA Fulgore

Gasping and defeated, Sadira reveals the identity of the one who sanctioned her life: ARIA leads a reborn Ultratech. With renewed purpose, Orchid becomes a mercenary angel of vengeance, bent on burning Ultratech to the ground.

Spare Fulgore, ULTRA Sadira

Branded a rogue and psychotic, Orchid leaves behind a wake of death and terror in her single-minded campaign against Ultratech. As others are drawn to her cause, Orchid's network becomes an increasingly unstable and deadly global force to be reckoned with.

ULTRA Both Sadira and Fulgore

With only personal conviction to maintain her crusade against Ultratech, Orchid nearly falters-- until she is again reunited with her brother, Jago. Each grappling with inner demons, they are strengthened by mutual cooperation, resolved to aid each other to the end.

Characteristics

Name: Orchid
Sex: Female
Age: 32
Height: 5'9"
Weight: Unknown
Race: Human
Family: Jacob (father) and Jago (Brother)
Affiliation: Disavowed, Night Guard, The Alliance (reluctantly)
Alignment: Good
Fighting Style: Rushdown
Weapons: Electrified Eskrima Sticks

Personality

"A devoted soldier driven to obsession, Orchid will never abandon a mission while she lives."
—Orchid's story mode description

A steadfast and intrepid servicewoman, Orchid's life changed dramatically when she was sent to investigate a RUMINT about the sinister ambitions and sprawling web of influence of the supposedly defunct Ultratech. Quickly uncovering that the corporation not only remains active but in fact has never been as powerful, Orchid is targeted by Ultratech's enigmatic CEO, ARIA, after she gathers information that threatens to expose the full extent of the company's influence over governments, mass media, financial institutions and the military-industrial complex.

Disavowed by her organization and labelled a dangerous rogue, the Black Orchid responds by making Ultratech's smears her own, and establishes an underground spy network of agents who were similarly brought to ruin by the megacorporation. Bereft of official support, in constant danger and under severe psychological strain, ARIA expected Orchid to falter. But the secret agent instead embarks on a crusade against Ultratech, and starts building out the Disavowed into a fully-fledged paramilitary resistance movement, bent on strategically sabotaging ARIA's operations across the world.

Pitted in a contest of wills against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy, Orchid becomes increasingly volatile, until she is reunited with her long-lost half-brother, Jago; with the siblings resolving to support each other in their struggles, no matter the outcome.

Powers and Abilities

Orchid with her electrified eskrima sticks

Trained as an elite field agent for covert operations, wet-works and black ops by the Special Warfare Department of the US military, the mysterious and beautiful woman known as the Black Orchid combines the qualities of a special forces operative and an assassin, rendering her deceptively lethal in combat. Orchid fights in a military CQC-style which emphasizes legwork, grappling and ground control techniques in order to subdue her victim, and utilizes various crowd control weaponry, such as stun batons or flashbang grenades, to disorient and control her mark before taking it down. Because of a highly classified government experiment that has been performed on her paternal grandmother, the Black Orchid is capable of summoning a cat-like manifestation of energy (which she affectionately calls the "firecat") that obeys her every command and which assaults anything that is threatening her.

Orchid has been known to assume this cat-like form of energy herself as well, implying that the "firecat" in actuality is the extension of her own life force.

Other Media