The Manufactured Newborn's Birth

The Manufactured Newborn is the youngest of the known Fears. Its' beginnings are unknown, but the first glimpses of its earliest form were that of a pocketwatch. This pocketwatch was thought to be capable of killing the Fears, which made it a very valuable commodity to the victims of the Fears' destruction. A teenager by the name of Owen Norris was the first to find it, thinking it a discarded personal item. Unfortunately, this brought the attention of the supernatural community upon him. The first of them to notice was the Srgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Yes, I know it's a pretty ridiculous name. It's supposed to be. It isn't the real name, and I can't find out what it is for the life of me.) To save space, I'll simply refer to them as the Lonely Hearts. The Lonely Hearts were extremely interested in wiping the pocketwatch's existence from the world, and from people's memories. Peter Rivers, a member of said organization, was assigned to kill Owen because of his contact with the watch. Before Peter could succeed, he was fired.

Well, once Peter was fired, he became a wild card. His family were the creators of the Lonely Hearts, and with his kick from their organization, he was also disowned by them. With all that free time on his hands, his conscience began to bother him. He knew what would happen to Owen if he didn't step in. He couldn't stand to have an innocent child's blood on his hands. Once he realized that, he decided to go and try to save the kid from getting killed. Around this time, Hunter received an old letter from Peter apologizing for the death of his family. In his desperation to avenge his family, he tracked Peter back to Portsmouth. Portsmouth, of course, being the town Owen lived in. While Hunter was tracking Peter, a criminal Rivers helped put in jail was hired by the Lonely Hearts to kill Peter. The criminal, Maxwell, got in touch with Hunter claiming to know where Peter was. They met and Maxwell persuaded Hunter to steal the pocketwatch from Peter and Owen.

Hunter caught up with Peter and Owen and stole the pocketwatch. Before Hunter could successfully kill the Rake, Maxwell ditched him and began to travel towards New Jersey. So what did Hunter decide to do? Oh, only team up with Peter, the guy who he stole the watch from originally, to go and track the bastard down to get it back. Now, along the way, Hunter stumbled upon a little girl by the name of Charlotte. This girl also happened to heavily resemble his dead daughter. She looked and spoke as if she were the victim of an abusive home, and begged him to help bring her to her grandparents house to escape. Hunter unsurprisingly took pity on the girl, and decided to bring her with him. She asked to go see a local diner before she arrived at her grandparents home. She raved about it enough that Hunter, having a serious soft spot for the girl, caved and agreed to take her. Peter was suspicious as hell about it but couldn't talk Hunter out of going.

They show up at the diner and began to eat.  About halfway through their meal, Steward and his lackeys showed up. Steward, you see, was given an invitation from a puppet of the Wooden Girl to show up at the very dinner Hunter, Peter and Charlotte were at. Why? "To meet the doll." If you've ever had any experience with the Fears, you'll know what's coming next. Steward had a history with Charlotte, a history that Peter should have damn well known about before he ever showed up. The Steward walked up to the table, and began to speak. Now, what happens next is rather confusing and conflicted. Everyone at the table heard something different from what the others heard. Some heard death threats, some heard cryptic messages, whatever, it was all a clusterfuck that wasn't real. The Choir had shown up, and decided to play with those present by changing what each person heard. Maybe they were hoping they'd all kill each other? They all drew their weapons and everything became still. Steward chastised them for wanting to shoot him in front of children and well, Peter invited him to get the fuck out.

While all of this was going on, Charlotte took advantage of the situation and tried to stab Peter in the throat. Peter tried to retaliate, and this set off Hunter. He started screaming something about not hurting his baby girl and attacked him. While the two of them were busy fistfighting like schoolchildren, Charlotte slipped away and invited Steward to go speak privately. Steward's lackies Glorius and Acedia were assigned to keep the hunters busy while they got away. Well, they succeeded. They also succeeded in getting their asses kicked by Hunter. They did, however, escape before he could manage to kill them. Hunter was hurt pretty badly from the fight, and Peter wasn't strong enough to carry him out of the diner.

As he was trying to pick Hunter up, a man walked into the diner. One of Steward's enemies, Sleight (a man driven by the Compulsion), had come to rescue them from the aftermath that was soon to come. The Lonely Hearts as well as the police who were being called to the scene of the shootout were close by. Peter and Hunter could barely walk, much less explain to the police why they were shooting Proxies in broad daylight. Sleight dragged them through a Door into the Empty City, which brought them to a nearby hotel room so they could heal and get away from the chaos. Shortly afterwards, the investigators Baker and Bellman showed up to question the witnesses. The witnesses, also affected by the Choir, gave them extremely conflicted answers. Only two of them got the damn thing right, but that's neither here nor there.


Sleight, Hunter and Peter show up at the amusement park, Land of Make Believe. He directs them through a Door into the Empty City to "save on time", and on the other side they see a crowd of hooded people shooting at Maxwell. Hiding on the other side of the merry go round, were Baker and Bellman. Steward had no problem recognizing their presence, but for whatever reason kept quiet. When Maxwell ran out of bullets, Charlotte glided towards him and surrounded him in what looked like miles of transparent strings. He tried valiantly to shake off the strings, and pulled out the pocketwatch to use on his attackers. Instead of his using the pocketwatch, it wound up using him as the blood sacrifice necessary for its birth. As the pocketwatch sank into his skin, the Fears began to appear for the show. The Slenderman, the Wooden Girl, Archangel, The Choir, the Rake, and the Eye all appeared to watch the birth of their new brother. Once the pocketwatch reached the core of his body, Maxwell fell apart like rotten fruit, and from the remains floated a metallic looking fetus. All of the Fears that were present fled with the fetus, or the Manufactured Newborn rather, leaving behind their small army of bodyguards.

Steward caught sight of Sleight after the Fears vanished, and gave chase. Sleight, for once not being a complete idiot, opened a door into the Empty City to escape. Steward followed after him, barely avoiding the mess his Master and His companions had left behind. The miniature army were rather brutish members of a group by the name of the Timberwolves. Well, apparently the Timberwolves were pissed as hell at being left behind and began shooting at Hunter and Peter. The two of them split up in what was basically their only option at surviving. Hunter wound up climbing the ferris wheel and shooting at the mob until he ran out of ammo. Just before he was about to fall to their attacks, the Rake showed up and slaughtered the Timberwolves. Peter, well, Peter wound up 'dying.' A rip in the sky opened up and the sky reached down and grabbed him, pulling him up into nothingness. We found out later that Peter became an Agent of The Fears, but that's another story entirely.

Amidst all of the drama going on, the investigators thankfully managed to get the hell out of there before they got shot. They began to travel in search of another Boojum (Fear) they had heard sightings of, and during their travels noted their being followed by a nondescript white truck. Driver not visible. When they arrived at the town of their choosing, they ran across newspaper headline about a childkiller that had been brutally murdered while serving his time. They questioned the cellmate and surrounding prisoners, but got nothing until the day before his cellmate's death. Apparently, he wrote a letter describing the Boojum and its gruesome details to the two of them, and begged them to try and stop it. The letter also told them the Boojum would never stop.

Frightened out of their wits, they called the 'feds', the SMSC. This task force was apparently a government agency focused on dealing with the Fears and their destruction. Once the SMSC showed up, Carol and Frank found out that there had been sightings of these murderous 'toys' from all over the nation. And so, the various different officers and their backup surrounded the prison the murder had taken place. They waited for perhaps an hour or two, having been told the creature had been sighted and cornered. Suddenly, the prison imploded upon itself, and out crawled the creature. No longer was this Boojum a tiny creature, the thing was the size of a car and monstrous looking. It looked to have consumed spare parts and various body parts from around the prison to make the mass they saw before them. With the prisoner's heart beating in its chest, it was a nightmare to behold. The Newborn fled from the gunshots to perch atop of the prison's fence, and tore open the sky. Behind the rip, a terrifying engine-like tower of gears, parts, and flesh was to be seen. This, this thing behind the sky was the Manufactured Newborn in all of its glory. Once all was said and done, the Fear was nicknamed by the two as the Cheshire Cat, for the ability to disappear and reappear at random, vanishing into the hellish place that its main body was located.

To my knowledge, the Manufactured Newborn has not been seen since. Then again, if you saw a monstrous little child consuming blood and machinery to grow, would YOU tell someone about it?