Ren Oyama was born and raised in Maine to Japanese immigrant parents. His parents worked long hours, which inspired and pushed Ren to work as hard as he could.
His father worked as a florist and ran a flower shop, which Ren would help out at on the side, and his mother worked as a Botanist. Being in Maine and his parents' professions, Ren was constantly surrounded by nature and flowers, but would spend most of his free time online and learning about computers, robotics, and all sorts of up and coming technological advancements.
He earned himself degrees in Computer Science and Electrical engineering, with a Masters degree in Mechanical engineering. He published some papers as well as earned himself a few patents on soft robotic and human integrations.
He worked a few jobs, but found himself at a high paying, top secret program, working on the new age of Sentinel robots in New York.
He helped with developing its recognition software as well as increasing its mobility capabilities.
It crossed his mind that maybe it wasn’t the most *moral* job, but it paid well, it was just a job. It’s not like him or his family would ever be affected (you fool, you absolute buffoon).
One day while on his way to work, he was caught in a head on car collision that nearly killed him. In the panic, and Ren nearly dead, his x-gene activated.
He was rushed to the hospital, and managed to survive thanks to the doctors. His left leg needed to be amputated, above the knee, he gained scarring on the lower half of his face as well as on his body, and he lost his left index finger.
He spent months in recovery, and was more recently able to return to work in an attempt to make a dent his large sum of medical bills. After months of fighting the insurance companies, he was finally approved for an above the knee prosthetic, which he’s been practicing with after the long process of being fit for one. He's already debating making his own adjustments to it...if it weren't so expensive.
His realization that he was a mutant was a slow one, and at first he chalked it up to side effects of the pain medications he was on. But as he slowly was taken off those, he realized the constant annoying signals and *whining* from plants were there to stay. He began promptly discarding any "Get Well" Flowers he received, unable to deal with the needling noises of the dying plants.
His return to work was, unfortunately, short lived, when Literal Aliens From Outer Space invaded New York!
The Stark Tower in which he was working at the time, sustained heavy damage, and he was pretty ready to accept his fate as Bug Food when he realized the elevator would probably be out of order.
As fate would have it, an alien plant, hitchhiked on one of The Brood aliens as it invaded the city. The alien, while swarming the Stark Tower, gets killed and the plant is left vulnerable in the crumbling tower.
The Alien Plant “sees" Ren, see's some sort of mobile plant, and Ren senses The Plant. They can’t understand each other, BUT the one thing they both understand is that they both want to survive. Driven by the pure instinct to Survive, Ren reached out for the plant, not understanding why but knowing it was his only chance. In their moment of contact, Ren's mutation enhanced the The Alien's Plants Synergizing abilities, which allowed it to merge and fuse to Ren's spine. At the same time, the plant then boosted it's energy into ren, enhancing his own mutation, which in turn created a feedback loop that created their Permanent Symbiotic Relationship.
Aliens bombarded the tower, but with the help of The Plant, acting entirely on autopilot to protect it's new home, wrapped Ren in protective vines shielding him from fires, explosions, and attacked any alien that got close. He was able to escape Stark Tower alive, The Plant aiding him with traversing the warzone the city had become. The plant helped fill in his injuries, acting as a living bandage, and kept him alive until he was escorted to safety.
He avoided the doctors after, figuring he'd been through worse, and wanting to avoid drawing any attention to his new plant passenger. He might have recently accepted the fact that he was a mutant, but he wasn't exactly ready for anyone else to know.
In terms of the relationship between him the new plant imbedded in his back, Ren is very aggressive in the opinion that there *isn’t* one. The plant sends him signals that he can’t hope and isn’t willing to decipher. In Ren’s opinion, it’s just easier to ignore that it even exists. The plant is just a dirty freeloader, even if it saved his life.
