Difference between revisions of "Operative Fawkes (Justice)"

Latest revision as of 06:45, 25 February 2012

Brandon Fawkes, as a trading card.

The Morning

"Brandon! What have you done!?" screamed my mother when she saw me holding the knife I had used to cut out my left eye.

She rushed to my side and pulled the knife from my hand, flinging it across the room. She started crying, and sobbing as she clutched me. She half carried, half dragged me downstairs into the kitchen where she soaked a kitchen towel and put it on my eye as she frantically wrestled with the phone to dial 911. All the while, I sat impassive, barely connecting with what was going on. Later, I would learn that this is called "dissociating."

After spending a long time in the hospital between surgeries and antibiotic regimens to try to stave off infection and save the eye (which proved impossible) I was transferred to a psychiatric hospital. They determined there, rather shortly, that I was in no danger of suicide... and since the original action was self-directed, they didn't spend as much time as perhaps they ought on determining my... homicidal tendencies.

New Haven Home for Boys

After I was discharged from the psych wing of the hospital, I was admitted into the New Haven Home for Boys in Cap au Diable. This place was a real winner. Mostly, it functioned as a boarding house for boys who had been involved in some sort of criminal history. But, it had its share of kids like me too... well, boys with identified psychiatric issues. No one there was "like me" at all.

It wasn't long before I developed a nickname, two actually. Among the boys that liked me, I was "Fox." To those who numbered among the bullies of New Haven, I was "Carver," a less than creative name alluding to my now rather disfigured face. Confidentiality amounted to a hill of beans in this place, everyone knew what I had done, and a good deal of folks thought I was bat-shit crazy... even among those I could call my friends.

While at New Haven, I endured daily abuse from the folks who thought Carver was a harmless little crazy kid. Though I was still somewhat small for a 15 year old, I could hold my own alright. That didn't spare me from countless black eyes, wedgies and other abuses. Silently, I kept a tally of the initiators, the ones who got the other kids going... not those who followed along because they were too scared not to. I would see to it that they got theirs.

All this time, my mother's visits grew less and less frequent. But, that didn't bother me. What did bother me, was that every time she came, she couldn't bear looking at my face. Even when I began wearing sunglasses to her ever-dwindling visits.

As I approached the magical age of 18, the state and New Haven began discussing what they would do in terms of my "permanency plan." Yes, that sounded oh so lovely, didn't it? Especially when uttered by overweight balding men in cheap suits who saw you once a month and thought they could plan the rest of your life. I decided that I would have to go out on my own soon, and on my own terms. New Haven couldn't legally keep my past 18, but it seemed likely that I wouldn't be let out into the wild world either, citing a "marked lack of progress and insight in therapy." They felt that I was, unstable, and had yet to share enough about the incident that brought me into New Haven to just wash their hands of me. It turns out, they were right about that.

On the eve of my last court date before my transfer to some "adult program" I woke up at around 3 AM. I had secreted away a knife that I had taken when I had kitchen duty a month prior... and after dealing with the visions that assaulted me when I held it, took it to the rooms of each of the boys I had deemed "initiators" and slit each of their throats while they slept. I took the knife into the headmaster's office, laid it on his desk, and grabbed my bags. It would be the last day I saw the inside of the New Haven Home for Boys.

The Power

Maybe I should take a few minutes to discuss why I cut out my eye in the first place? Share a little something that even the "best" therapists at New Haven couldn't get out of me?

When I turned 12, I began to get flashes of... well, at the time I didn't know what they were. But I later learned that they were flashes of past and future events. It happened when I touched certain objects. This "gift" is called psychometry. Every time it happened, I got a searing pain behind my left eye. Now, this didn't happen when I touched anything, but rather certain objects. Objects that a person with intense emotions had held, or where they had stood during an important event could trigger it. My house was littered with these places and things, probably because it was an old house... but also, because my mother was a very emotional person.

What made this especially horrible, is that while I was getting these "visions" I was subject to a debilitating pain behind my eye. I nearly passed out a number of times during one of these events. I was fortunate that few of them happened around my mother, else I would have spent a lot more time in the hospital.

Finally, when I was 15, I had had enough. I thought that there must be some sort of connection between my eye, and these visions. I thought that if I could just get rid of that eye when it was happening, that I would be cured... So, to that end, I brought my mother's engagement ring to my room (she had taken it off while doing the dishes) and brought it and a knife back to my room. The rest of this story, I think I told you already, so I will spare you the details here. Suffice it to say, I was wrong. My eye had nothing at all to do with the power itself. And it seemed that removing it, painful as it should have been, was well, only the beginning of pain.

Indeed, it was the gateway to so much more pain... most of it mine.

Arachnos

So, after all of this... how did I end up in the service of Arachnos? Well, after leaving New Haven behind, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Eventually, I stumbled upon the fact that Arachnos was recruiting new soldiers into its ranks. And, with me being old enough to join, having no real place to go... and an established proficiency in the art of killing, it seemed only natural that I would join up.

After some initial time spent as just a normal Wolf Spider, my psychometry power was discovered and I was drafted into the corp of Widows under the leadership of the beautiful Ghost Widow. The rest, as they say, is history. I have been a (mostly) loyal assassin and soldier ever since.

Costumes

Operative Fawkes is as often seen in his Widow costume, as his other, more personalized look. He also likes to don a more casual look for when he spends time "off-duty."

Metagame Information

— This section pertains to out-of-game information and is included for the benefit of the reader, or to include other OOC information.

I had been trying to make a Widow for a long time... and finally a costume idea struck me, so I pretty much instantly made it. However, I didn't have a good backstory for the character, and he was stuck with an okay-ish name (Elevatus). Something was missing. So, once I got him to 10, and the additional costume slot, I messed around with some options, then further tweaked the original VEAT costume... and finally, when going through faces a bio sprang into my head. I had all to do to write it down!

Badges

All this character's badges are listed here on City Info Tracker.