Kyle Cook
Kailì Kao, known by his Anglicized name, Kyle Cook, is a player character in the Endsieg campaign, played by Benjamin Swiatek. Aboard the Rhyton, he serves as bartender, custodian, gunman, and special operations agent.
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Background
Parents
Kailì was born to Kao Chenglei and Nishihara Fujiko in 1924.
Sixteen-year-old Chenglei was drafted into a Chinese special ops program late in WWI in response to increasing Japanese influence over Southeast Asia. There he met Fujiko, daughter of Nishihara Kamezo, a private Japanese businessman who negotiated the Nishihara loans that gave Chinese territorial concessions to the Japanese government. In true Romeo-and-Juliet fashion, the pair fell in love almost immediately, and immigrated to America illegally aboard a cargo ship carrying fish exports from Japan. It was hardly a pleasant journey, but one they felt at the time was more than worth it.
Still, Romeo and Juliet probably die in the story for a reason. Once Fujiko and Chenglei's initial passion wore off, there wasn't much left to their relationship. They had their first and only child Kailì in a failed attempt to add substance to their marriage, remaining together because neither considered divorce an option. Their lives became among other things something of a competition for Kailì's affections, a contest that Fujiko ultimately won. Chenglei (now Charley, a farm worker) taught Kyle everything he knew about stealth operations, mostly out of boredom. Fujiko, with her father's mind for business, gradually worked her way up to sales manager of a machinery production company (originally, the company produced agricultural machines, but has since been transformed into a war factory). Her ability to turn Kyle to her side had much to do with her ability to buy him things, and not necessarily because she actually cares for him more than Charley.
Both of Kyle's parents were interned at the start of the war; Kyle was spared thanks to his intense assimilation and the vouching of several of his school teachers and coaches.
Adolescence
Kyle excelled in hard sciences throughout his schooling, particularly biology and chemistry; machinery, while not a crippling weakness, was not one of his strengths, however. Kyle played varsity soccer in his later high school years, as well as intermural lacrosse. Though not exceptionally popular, Kyle cultivated a reputation as a good listener, a trait that did him few favors with his jock buddies but which attracted many female friends, including his future wife Darla Marshall.
Kyle's realization and acceptance of his homosexuality occurred gradually over the course of his twelfth and thirteenth years. Although under obvious social pressure to remain in the closet, Kyle felt decidedly uncomfortable being forced to hide not only from his classmates but his parents. Coping with this necessity would prove to be one of the core struggles of his teenage years. When, at fifteen, he was asked out by Darla Marshall, he accepted, going on a number of dates before confessing his preference for the first time.
Outwardly, Kyle was lucky - other than a few accusations of being overly fashion-conscious, Kyle suffered few homosexual stereotypes, and avoided confrontation on the subject, with one notable exception. In his senior year, driven to boldness by repressed feelings, Kyle made a pass at a soccer teammate, who was kind enough to reject the advance with awkward grace. The boy's father, having been told the story, was not so understanding, and tracked down Kyle on his walk home following one of the team's practices. The man struck Kyle repeatedly, threatening to do worse and to spread Kyle's secret if he ever tried "corrupting" his son or any of the other boys again. Inventing the story of a sports accident to satisfy his parents, Kyle put all hope of a romantic life from his mind.
Unrelated to but coinciding with these developments was the emergence of a second urge, one less distinct and with which Kyle was far less comfortable. In his freshman year of high school, Kyle discovered within him a violent streak; whereas in his preteen years he had like many boys taken a decided interest in the
Living with secrets as he did, Kyle was always wary of losing control of himself, a worry that would later drive him to abstain from almost all substance experimentation.
Relationships
Vincent Thomas
Vincent Thomas is Kyle's long-term boyfriend and partner in crime.
Vincent and Kyle met on May 27th, 1945, at a final examination for the honors lecture course Concepts of Theoretical Chemistry, taught by Linus Pauling (an ex-friend of J. Robert Oppenheimer's and noted pacifist), at CalTech University. The pair were introduced by mutual acquaintances and engaged in a last-minute study session, wished each other good luck, and promptly forgot each other's existence for three months.
The following semester, Vincent enrolled in a Human Anatomy class for which Kyle served as an undergraduate TA. Both perceived a shared enthusiasm for dissection that led the pair to take special interest in one another, and the two became fast friends, meeting outside of class both for extracurricular "research" and more socially.
