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Tracker-764, also known by the disparaging nickname of “the Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane” or “the Mad Cupid of the Woods”, was a Clockwork Cherub. Although he spent years in the Euclidean Plane, he eventually rejoined the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids in time to help confound Mandragora-257's final scheme and help end the Rifts Crisis, whereupon he was admitted into the Scarlet Wings.
Description
Physical appearance
As a Clockwork Cherub, Pythagoras was a small copper-coloured, winged, humanoid robot with a simplified, sketchy face and short hair. After his many years of adventures in the Euclidean Plane, his frame was visibly battered; his wings, in particular, were heavily damaged, clearly non-functional. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!) He had also had to replace one of his legs with a crude wooden one which made it difficult for him to navigate uneven terrain. (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane) While travelling through the Multiverse in search of a way back to the Cupid Homeworld, he took to wearing a hooded black cloak to conceal his identity, having learned that the Cupids had many enemies. (PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market)
Personality
Tracker764 was a highly driven individual, having spent years by himself in the Euclidean Plane dragging a single elusive target for romanticisation (the Pulsaton nicknamed Doki Dick), (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane, Rifts Crisis Officially Over!) which originated as an eagerness to prove himself to Colonel-028 before evolving into an end unto himself. Tracker eventually went through some personal growth and forced himself to give up on his unattainable goal after he realised that his obsession with Doki Dick had almost destroyed a great number of universes. (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane) Marksmanship-522 praised his resourcefulness in a crisis. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!)
Biography
As the Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane
As a young Cupid, Tracker completed Technophile-963's virtual training course and was then sent on his first proper mission to the well-mapped Euclidean Plane alongside fellow Mark VIII, Companionship-790. Just before they set out out on the mission, Colonel-028, who had trained him in some of the finer points of being a member of the Crew, gave him the following advice: “Stay away from Triangries and Octasers. And don’t bother trying to romanticise a Pulsaton, they’re impossible to catch”. Eager to prove himself, and taking the Colonel's claims about his own exploits too seriously, Tracker decided there and then to pursue and romanticise a Pulsaton after all. After an otherwise-successful mission, when a rainstorm began to pour down, Tracker refused to get back into their Fog Ship with Companionship, instead chasing a Pulsaton who'd just appeared.
Though he claimed that he'd be back in a minute, het let Companionship leave without him, and never actually went back to the meeting point; (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane) He became obsessed with tracking down the Pulsaton, now nicknamed Doki Dick, and never returned. The wider Crew became aware of this. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!, The Euclidean Plane) He earned himself the nickname of “Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane” among other Clockwork Cherubs, (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane, Rifts Crisis Officially Over!) while the Euclideans themselves similarly knew him as “the Mad Cupid of the Woods”.
Over the years, he sustained significant damage, and repaired himself however he could. For example, “five or six years” before his eventual departure from the Plane, he lost one of his legs while following Doki Dick's trail through a mountainous area, accidentally triggering a “sphere-slide”. He replaced it with a crude wooden leg which allowed him to walk, but caused him difficulties in uneven terrain. (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane)
With the old man
Tracker once lost Doki Dick's tracks in the Triangle Mountains. A few weeks later, he found the trail again, lost his tracks at a swamp, but then spotted Dick in person the next morning. Chasing the Pulsaton, Tracker tailed him all the way to a ravine, into which the Geometron jumped. Looking over the edge, Tracker found that the ravine contained a mysterious dimensional Rifts hovering high above the actual ground, and decided to jump. He found himself falling out through another Rift in a mysterious “hub dimension” whose small landmass was surrounded on all sides by numerous Rifts. The sole building was a cabin where he met an old man who'd been stranded here for ages, too afraid to cross another Rift and risk ending up somewhere dangerous. The cabin contained a number of books on dimensional science of unknown provenance, which allowed the old man to craft Prisms capable of containing Rifts.
The old man also knew of a way to prevent any more Rifts appearing in this dimension, which was an urgent concern, as too many Rifts would cause complete dimensional collapse and a shockwave of destruction that would ruin many more universes nearby. However, he couldn't do it alone. Tracker worked for four weeks collecting the necessary minerals and helping the old man craft three of the four Prisms needed, in addition to the prototype he already possessed. Just in the nick of time, they performed the ritual to activate the stabilisation field, which involved the two of them standing at opposite corners of the landmass and slotting two Prisms at a time into their designated pedestals at exactly the same time. Tracker briefly hesitated when he spotted a vulnerable Doki Dick stepping out of a Rift at the last moment, but he controlled himself and let Dick leave to instead complete the ritual. (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane)
Multiversal wanderer
After the crisis passed, Tracker decided not to resume his hunt for Doki Dick, and to instead try to get back to the Cupid Homeworld. With no other method of dimensional travel available, he crossed through a randomly-chosen Rift, though not before saying warm goodbyes to the old man, who gifted him a few of his dimensional-science books. Ironically, when the old man shortly decided to leave as well and stepped through another random Rift, he found that that Rift led him to the Cupid Homeworld, where he told Dandy-432 and Larrikin-1029 about his encounter with Tracker, whose reputation they knew. (PROSE: The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane)
Tracker-764 traded the last of his crystals for an outdated Void Ship which was useless to him without the exact coordinates of the Cupid Homeworld to plug into it. He eventually flew it to the Interdimensional Tavern, hoping he would find someone who knew these exact. Alistair Neezley was no help, despite his claims of being a seasoned multiversal adventurer, but he soon found such a person in the form of beaten enemy of the Crew, Darius. With Darius concealing his identity as an enemy of the Crew, and Tracker concealing his identity as a Cupid under a hooded black cloak, the two made a deal to fly to the Homeworld together in Tracker's Ship.
However, as they were building up speed in the Void, one of the floating eldritch abominations tried to take a bite out of the Ship. They managed to pierce through the dimensional divide at the last minute, but not before the closing jaws of the abomination dealt some damage to the engine and the directional system. As such, instead of the Cupid Homeworld, the Ship materialised in a random dimension which happened to be the Interdimensional Black Market, where it promptly crashed. Using a little Earth money left in Darius's wallet, Darius and Tracker were able to buy a 210K Twin-Carbonoid Dualtech Engine from the ship-parts seller at the Market, as well as the ship-building robot CS-NA, whom they set on the task of repairing the Ship.
However, they were identified by a Wraith as outsiders and taken to the throne room of the Queen of the Black Market. Trying to stab Tracker, the Queen uncovered his true nature as a Clockwork Cherub, much to Darius's outrage. Realising the duo might be valualble, she tried to auction them off. Using his Clockwork Cherub ability to hack into any pre-1960 technology, Tracker signaled for CS-NA to bid ludicrous amounts of money on them, allowing them to slip away from the auction area. Before the two and their “buyer” could leave aboard the newly-rebuilt Ship, the Queen spotted them trying to leave without paying, and as they took off, the Ship was soon damaged again as one of the pursuing Wraiths tore away one of the stabilising fins. However, this did not overly compromise the Ship's aim, and Tracker was able to fly it back to the Tavern, where he dropped off Darius, who had tried to double-cross him by throwing him out of the Ship.
He then, finally, set a course for the Cupid Homeworld, where he crashed it into Pessimist-242 as he landed due to Pessimist not bothering to get clear despite ample time to do so. (PROSE: Misadventures in the Interdimensional Black Market) Once it became known to more than just Pessimist, his reappearance a decade after his original disappearance caused some fracas. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!)
Back in the Crew
After his return to the Crew with CS-NA, Tracker befriended Marksmanship-522 and Bibliophile-962. At some point after his return to the Crew, he was photographed in the Jungles of Antazoonia. He later claimed that he had “fought off cyborgs, static monsters, and Imperium agents”.
Together with Marksmanship, Bibliophile and the Hound, Tracker was one of the few Cupids left outside the Homeworld when travel to and from it was cut off by a Rift. The group ended up uncovering the source of the Rifts Crisis plaguing the Multiverse: the Consistency Imperium, assisted by another Cupid long thought dead, Mandragora-257. They were nearly killed by the explosion of Mandragora's Machine, but they were rescued at the last second by the Faction of the Fooling Fish in a stolen tachyonic sailing ship.
After being returned to the Homeworld, Tracker was accepted into the Crew's elite the Scarlet Wings on the recommendation of Marksmanship, who was already a senior member — albeit only after going through an accelerated period of training. The fact was recorded in The Cupid Courier. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!)
Behind the scenes
Origins
Tracker-764 is one of the main recurring characters of the The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids series. He was first mentioned, anonymously, in The Euclidean Plane, the earliest-written piece of Cupids prose in the Official Reading Order of the series, arguably making him the earliest of the recurring characters to have made his debut.