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Her father, some "anthropologist of some sort" (his words) left Kris on what seems a random rock of a planet, Orvath, in the care of "Grandma Sophie." He'd come by to visit and teach her to fight when it suited him, or when he remembered he had a daughter.

Despite her father's insistence that she needs to "know how to defend herself" because "one day she'll learn what's out there," Kris only ever watned to be an academic. Her general thirst for knowledge started relatively young (for her). It didn't take her long to start building a library in Grandma Sophie's little cottage and immersing herself in knowledge on any subject she could get her hands on.

Once Kris was "old enough" to study with her peers, she immediately fell in love with biology, specifically lab work. It wouldn't take much longer for her to have lab access almost constantly and really start digging into things. Like her "Grandma." One simple enough test revealed that Kris and Grandma Sophie are 0% related. Heck, they aren't even the same species!

Kris has always had an innate curiosity and was naturally good at science, so academics have since led her down the rabbit hole that is genetic research. In trying to figure out her own physiology, she's managed to accidentally but kind of sort of on purpose cure more than one genetic disease found in Orvath. In comparison, her own genetic material is quite a mix of something weird with something interesting. No one else's hair starts turning blue when their emotions get a jolt.

What bothered her for the next hundred years was seeing proof that Grandma Sophie's lifespan had been artificially altered. It didn't even look like a proper extension of lifespan, either, more like a rush job. Every time she'd ask Grandma or her father about it, they'd both give some noncomittal response. Whenever she'd ask her father anything, he'd dance around her questions, telling her to focus on the training that she'd been doing with half a mind for decades now. Not that he could land a hit on her either way, which she was secretly quite proud of. Her career would take the forefront of her focus for the next few centuries, she was sure.

One day, Kris realized she hadn't seen her father in a while, like some 50-odd years or so. The nagging feeling of abandonment that had always plagued the back of her mind surfaced full-frce at the realization that he'd left her behind. Besides Grandma Sophie, he was all the family Kris had known. While Grandma Sophie may be a positive influence in her life, some wounds run deep. Too deep. Kris would spend the next 30 or so years in a workaholic's depression.

Grandma Sophie never loved her any less, always being supportive of Kris's passions. She cared for Kris as best she could, worrying that if Kris wasn't prompted to take her meals she'd let herself wither into the depths of her broken heart. This is when Kris's "messy hair, don't care" attitude comes from. Grandma Sophie wasn't about to let her charge wallow forever, but she didn't really know how to deal with a depressed older teen at all. Kris's inquisitive mind kept them both busy, and Grandma Sophie found it kept her sharp despite her growing age.

Kris would break out of her depression some years later, when she nearly died in a lab accident. Not her lab, even, but some insane mad scientist trying to create his own species simply for the notoriety of being the first. Of course, he just had to create a thankfully small, but unforgivingly deadly monster. This thing had tentacles teeming with cnidocytes, which were stingers full of a neurotoxin potent enough to cause severe muscle spasms, and possibly memory loss. At least, Kris tells herself the toxin caused memory loss, but she may very well have supressed the incident.

That day, it took several people to properly dispose of the monstrosity, later dubbed The Aberration. Eight people died, including the creator of the little abomination. Kris's months-long recovery was deemed a miracle by many, while she mostly felt annoyed at being hospitalized for so long. She was left with a prominent scar on her right arm from this incident, from just below her shoulder to the inside of her elbow. The main scar is long and deep, with smaller scars branching out from there where the cnidocytes had jabbed deeper into her skin. Now, whenever something feels dangerous or "off" her scar will start to itch.

Something changed in Kris after the hospitalization and she started spending a lot of time with Grandma Sophie. Probably in gratitude for her Grandma never having left her side through all of this, but also because she realized if not for the old woman she'd have gone through all that alone. Grandma Sophie was kind enough to encourage her not to let go of her passion for science, however, despite the fact that Kris would refuse to enter unfamiliar labs from then on.

Kris would spend a fair amount of time at the University, where her new lab was, helping write in new policies and safety regulations for everyone to follow throughout the academic institutions. Morals and ethics have never been strong values for anyone in Orvath, people just do what they want. Kris's solution to that was reminding people that she was the sole survivor of The Aberration, proudly displaying her scar everywhere she went.

She was eventually offered a proper teaching position, which she initially refused, but then accepted as part-time because her time with her Grandma was far more valuable to her. Not that time seemed to matter to her, she barely looked early-twenties with over two centuries of age. The baby face on such an old person sometimes annoyed her, but she'd learn to cope with it by dating around a bit.

As much as Kris had disliked being hidden away from the world until after her hundredth birthday, when she looked about eight years old, she never made any attempt to hide herself or her uniqueness. Her father had said it was "for her own protection" but Kris had always suspected there were other reasons behind this. Not that he'd tell her if there were. She spent most of her first hundred years reading anything and everything she could get her hands on. Now as she's older, she's realizing just how many friends have come and gone in her life. And died, too, because no one around here lives past eight decades or so.

The grief that was constant in her life got way worse when Kris properly fell in love. Her wife, Carmus was as charming as she was intelligent, and Kris fell hard. No amount of love could ever make Kris attempt a life-extension modification for Carmus, however. She already knew deep in her soul that it would only cause more pain in the end, and it would be in defiance of all her work from the last few decades. When her wife died of old age, Kris shut down her heart, deciding to never love like that again. She keeps both her and her late wife's rings in a red laquered box on a shelf with her other treasures and favorite books.

For the next twenty years, Kris would become more comfortable tempering her emotions so the blue in her hair wouldn't flare as much. It had become a more obvious blue as she'd grown older, despite the natural darkness of her hair. Carmus had loved her blue hair. This tempering broke completely down when Grandma Sophie announced she was dying of old age.

Grandma Sophie waited until she was on her deathbed to start laying down some facts for Kris. Like how Grandma Sophie didn't agree with what her father had tried to achieve through her, but she'd never go against him because he was some powerful entity that could have ended both their lives with the snap of his fingers. Kris finally gets answers to some of her questions, including Gran's life extention. That was also her dad's doing, which he seemed to have ******** up.

Kris wholly blames her father for that. And she says so.

So Grandma Sophie starts explaining about "what's out there" and all the realms around. Her mom was part of another realm as well, not that anyone here knows which one or what species she was. Kris has a full-blow breakdown freakout realizing of course she'd have a mother, but had never even thought of it before. Oh, also her father is probably off in some other realm doing whatever he does, if Kris wants to go find him. A lot of other truths and secrets are spilled within the next week while Grandma Sophie's heart weakens steadily.

Grandma Sophie also tells Kris of the funds she'd received for her silence about The Aberration. Kris was never told of this, and was never asked to sign anything to keep quiet. Still, they have plenty of funds for Kris's adventures in Finding her Father™ when she's ready.

Kris wouldn't be ready for a while, since after Grandma Sophie died she realized she was finally completely alone. That messed her up for a few months, until all that sadness and grief turned to anger. At herself, for not trying to save Grandma Sophie somehow, or even giving Carmus the choice of extending her life. Most of her anger, though, was for her father. He's the last of her family now, yet he's the one person who has rarely shown up for her. Having not seen each other in well over a century, Kris is more determined than ever to track him down and squeeze him for all the informations she wants. He's getting a good beating, or a swift death. After Kris gets her answers, of course.

She's since travelled through a few ports, playing tourist, shopping and trying to find a mysterious Key that would allow someone to find anyone else in the multiverse. This rumored Key is Kris's best hope since she has no clue where her father could be or what he could be doing. She thinks she's found it at one point, going so far to track down the seller and talking him down in price using her youthful big eyes, and a few well-placed lies about being broke and unfortunate. The seller relents, gives her the supposed Key and takes off.

Turns out, the thing she got isn't the Key, but when she does her best to find her father, she ends up explosively transporting herself to some weirdly ruined place. It's completely destroyed, and Kris has a brief moment of wondering if it was her fault. Upon a closer analysis, she realizes that the place was burned down quite some time ago, and that was after it had been destroyed prevoiusly. Odd. Who destroys a place twice? And where was her father at? Also, where in all the realms is she now?