OOC:
I think this was well written, and I understand how this could have been hard to write for you. A tiny point I'd like to make, Rick does not appear to be Chaotic Evil. I'd say more around Nuetral evil. He does what he wants according to his whims, but he is fairly predictable in that he wants lots of death and enjoys...lesser activities. Chaotic Evil characters, such as the joker, can sometimes be good. They have zero motivation for any of their actions. Sometimes they do something just because they DON'T want to do it.
Just a small nit-pick there. I am digging the excellent writing and look forward to more, as always. ^.^
I suppose at this point I must intervene. You see, as entertaining as I find Richards progress through life, I must say he really is quite predictable. Exhilarating, but predictable. Its like watching people get sucked into the void. You know theyre going to explode, or just flash-freeze in a still statue, but the end result is always the same: death.
Still, I needed Ransack (as he called himself) to serve a purpose. So, when Lord Recluse sent a squad to smash into the Zig and get a scan of the cells meant to hold him and the rest of the scum of the Earth, I added a little incentive to the pot. Fortunately, he also had the soldiers break some more freaks from the zoo, so the change of plans would remain unnoticed.
The two men who made it to the Lockdown had little clue as to what the prize I sent them to gather would do to them. If they had, they probably would have thrown my money back in my face and informed their superiors of my presence. It wouldnt have done them any good to do so, but they would have tried to have the hounds sent after me. However, greed won out, as it tends to with these simple creatures (especially when I presented so much to them up front and promised twice more if they returned with my Richard) and they went blindly to the job.
The flight crew didnt consider what it was that Ransack was picking his teeth with. How could they have known that hed killed the soldiers, eaten them, and used the blade of one of their staffs to whittle down a bone?
Do you see what I mean? Entertaining, but ultimately predictable.
I was somewhat surprised that he was willing to sit patiently throughout the whole ride to the region called the Etoile Isles. I suppose it had something to do with the propensity of scantily-clad women in the Flier with him. While he has the urges of normal men, I felt that his conflict with real super-powered beings had somewhat softened him to the idea of dealing with them again.
Ah yes, the Etoile Isles
I have cousins in the area, but theyve long-since let their godhood get to their proverbial heads and wound up bound in some way or another. Fortunately, we have others throughout the field
But I digress. As for my subject, Rick spent a few days learning the ins and outs of the renegade nation. He brushed a little close for comfort to the Themari chap, but moved on to his own ends to deliver some of his own brand of pain to the local rocket pack thuggery. I may have to deal with that other dark individual one day. He has potential, but its potential meant solely for himself, and not the greater work.
Within the span of a week I found him beating the ever-living snot out of one Vince Dubrowski. I have no idea what the perceived slight was, but when the crude vagrant was about to use the broken, bloated man for a lavatory, a full complement of Arachnos troops, led by one Operative Fulkerson, interrupted him and reminded him who the true power in the Isles was.
Certainly, the hit squad wasnt powerful enough to stop him, not by any means, but Ghost Widow and her legions wouldnt be far behind. After that, Black Scorpion, and Mako after that. Scirocco would have brought whole storms crashing down on his head and if it had to come to it, Recluse himself would have stopped my Ransack with as little effort as his lighter-side counterpart, but with all the fonts of unbridled power allowed to roam free throughout those islands, I doubt it would have come even close to that end. My word, the empowered denizens of that blighted place surprisingly band together to wipe out all sorts of extremely powerful creatures. Theyd certainly do the same to this pitiful speck (which he certainly became in that moment).
Richard Ransack Rick Jordan turned himself in to the authorities, and Mr. Dubrowski still lives to this day (albeit, with a somewhat more wary eye toward the meta-humans). My subject has become a plaything for Recluse, and Recluse has already sent him on his assignments. However, he will always truly be mine, for Im the one who gave him his power
As for who I am, well
Youll have to wait for another day
((Im going to end this here
I didnt realize what writing a character like this would do to me personally. I started feeling somewhat ill after writing just that last one and its not even a terribly explicit piece. Such monstrous characters truly sicken me, as I greatly dislike such a dissonance from basic humanity. Still, there you have it, my take on what evil is
It has a total disregard for not just society but humanity as a whole.
The next time youll see Rick will be in Greys Army, but it will be a while yet.
Also, I'd like to thank Samuel Tow for his style of writing in that Salvaged Meaning thread of his. It really helped me get a handle on the narrator of this piece, though my character has a more pointed purpose to his efforts, whereas his narrator is (at this point) simply an observer. However, it was the aloof nature that struck me, and it really helped me write this minor segment to explain Ransack's escape and proliferation without having to delve the recesses of my mind and dredge up the demons I do not wish to be.))
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
((Let me start off with a warning. There will be some disturbing things in this. If not through the main character's actions, then through his intent as well (and he will give voice to his intent).
It's difficult for me to write truly evil characters. The simple reason is because they scare me. If they scare me, then they should scare you, because what scares me is absolute and complete inhumanity.
I can understand what's motivating Recluse and Arachnos. It's an opposing concept of what we are typically presented as a moral method of ascension. Where the heroic one is based on the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you; alternately, so long as what you're doing doesn't directly or indirectly harm anybody, you're okay in our book), his is based on the concept of "Survival of the Fittest," which has been reiterated repeatedly across the forums and throughout the game.
Then there are the Jokers of comic books. We don't really HAVE one of those in this game. Not even Nemesis counts, because Nemesis is still trying to conquer the world. No, I mean we lack The Joker, along with smatterings of This. There is no character throughout all of the game that represents pure, absolute, violent, chaotic malevolence.
That's where Rick comes in...
I present to you... My "Evil Superman," Ransack Rick.))
--Smallton, Kentucky; 9:33 A.M.--
He awoke in a groggy daze. He had a headache that was throbbing its way out of his temples, but there wasn't a full enough bottle around to make the pain stop.
Looking at the clock, he saw he was late for work. Really late. Grumbling, he pushed himself off the mattresses he had stacked in the corner of his room for a bed and plodded over to the door.
He turned the knob and pushed the panel like he did every morning, and both objects broke free from their moorings. He stared at the knob as it crinkled and bent under his grip and wondered at it.
The loud bang of his door hitting the hallway floor, however, brought about a more pressing problem. His father, still drunk from dinner last night, came storming up the stairs, roaring incoherently about respect and how work had been calling all morning, he poked Rick in the chest and shook his hand like he'd hurt himself. Without thinking, the old man then went to backhand him with the other hand, which was still clutching an empty bottle.
The glass smashed apart and his father started clutching the bloody mess at the end of his wrist. Rick absent-mindedly rubbed his jaw, wondering how the tables had turned. Unfortunately for the old man, however, this sense of wonder was very fleeting.
----------
When the screaming finally stopped, a bloody mess that used to be Mr. Jordan's body hurtled through the house's front window and landed in the yard with a wet plop. A few minutes later, there was the loud, unmuffled roar of his pickup truck's engine just a moment before it crashed out the garage door.
Rick Jordan backed his pulped father's truck across the street and smashed into and over the car of his neighbor. When Mister Curtis tumbled out the driver's side door and started staggering away, he took the Swinson speed square his father had left lazily on the passenger seat and hurled it into the fat man's back.
Mister Curtis felt his life draining out of him as he heard the door of the vehicle open and close. There were footsteps as the man who'd just done this to him walked over and leaned in close to converse with him.
"Hello Mister Curtis," Rick intoned, "Is your daughter home?"
"No..." the man said weakly, "No..."
"Don't you die on me," the big man picked his head up and sneered into his face, "Don't you die on me!"
He watched the dying man for a few seconds, but he was only muttering the same negative over and over again.
"Well, since I can't tell whether or not you're just dying and these are your last words or if Christen's really not here, I'm gonna go take a look..."
Rick didn't really have a bad history with the family, but he also didn't feel like dealing with the girl's old man trying to stop him from doing what he wanted to do. Heck, it wasn't like anybody was going to be able to stop him now.
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--Noon--
Nobody saw the truck speeding for the intersection. When he smashed into the two sedan cars and started sending the middle of Smallton, Kentucky into chaos. Rick had been thrown into a store, smashed clean-through the front window. He'd clipped a couple people with his own body and they were still struggling to stand and figure out what had just happened to them.
He, however, picked himself out of the twisted wreckage of the product shelf he'd slammed into and leisurely walked right back out the way he'd come. A young woman was in his path, and when he casually kicked her head and it lolled around like a rag doll, he smiled a little.
As he got outside, he saw the police were trying to figure out just what had happened. They were examining the wreckage and a pair were walking up to him to see if he was okay. When he showed that not only was he okay but that he was also completely unharmed, they were almost about to say something about him being a possible superhero.
That is, until the realized who he was.
Rick Jordan had a record. A violent record. When he was fourteen, he hospitalized three other students after getting into a fight. His weapon of choice was the nozzle of a fire hose.
When he was released from Juvenile Hall eight months later, he celebrated his return by delivering a savage beating to the thugs he'd fought the first time around. One didn't survive, the other two were never able to walk again.
When he got out of Juvenile Hall, several years later, he was a different man. His life was a different animal. Whatever glimmer of innocence that had existed before prison was gone, now replaced by a cold, heartless, vindictive monster.
Nobody knew what had been keeping that young man in check. They had no idea that it was his abusive father, no longer restrained by Rick's mother (who had died of lung cancer while the young man was in his detention center), administering a regimen of abuse, most of which the young Jordan took with hardened stoicism.
However, there had been a marked increase in the local crime rate. Burglaries it was burglaries, minor assaults and muggings, mostly. While the sheriff and police had a good idea that Rick was the culprit, they also were unable to find enough evidence to arrest him. He'd picked up a few tricks from the veterans.
However, now, nothing could stop him. It was nothing to break doors or take a slap across the face without flinching. It was nothing to tear apart an old drunk with your bare hands. It was nothing to tear a house down with those same hands and ravage an innocent man's family, and even the man as he took his last breaths.
He had to know just what his body could take, and after that crash, he felt perfectly fine. He'd wondered whether or not he'd actually suffer some kind of dislocation or even get massively lacerated, but when the dust had settled, he felt fine.
In fact, he felt better than fine. He felt like a god. He felt like there was nothing he couldn't do.
And he prepared to demonstrate on the cops who were uneasily reaching for their weapons. In a blur, he sent the lady cop (he remembered her as one of his classmates), and she crashed into a fast food restaurant's window. The other, he picked up and threw at a telephone pole. It wasn't enough momentum to damage the pole, but the officer was definitely suffering internal damage.
Rick then turned his attention to the other police. He decided he'd work with their cars this time. He walked up and punched in the passenger side window of the nearest one. He then roughly pulled the cop out of the car, slamming the poor man's head against the window frame, and lazily tossed him down the block. The other cop turned to see what the commotion was, and got to see Jordan rolling his car over on top of him.
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--Paragon City--
"Are you alright?" Manticore asked suddenly, "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I have to go," Statesman said suddenly, "Something... Something's not right..."
And without another word, he was in the air and gone.
----------
--One Hour Later...--
"I don't think anybody gets it," he mused to himself as he walked to his destination, "You can kill a few dozen people, topple a few cars, even wear a cop's head as a codpiece..."
He looked down.
"By the way, how you doin' down there?"
There was no answer.
"I'll take your silence as 'feelin' fine.'"
He stretched and gazed about. He'd never liked this place. It was like a prison done wrong, with all the inmates allowed to just roam around and perpetuate their own little idiosyncrasies (he was surprised he knew what that word meant) and their little pack mentalities. The gangs were as bad here as they were in any city, it just took the right person demanding the right things.
"You can do all the things I've done in a day," Rick grumbled, "But you can never truly cement how evil you are until you waste everybody in a school."
He breathed in deeply, savoring the moment. Sure, the air raid siren had been blaring all day. He'd considered tearing it down, but in the course of walking to it, he'd come to enjoy the sound. He found it fitting, somehow. Air raids, fire, tornadoes... He was a disaster, just like any one of them. A walking disaster, and now, his fancy happened to be the one thing that would make this whole nightmarish day a tragedy the world over.
He took one step forward and there was a thunderous sound. A bullet slammed into the ground in front of his foot. Rick didn't look to see that it was sizzling where it hit the ground.
"I'm not letting you get through these doors, Jordan!" Sheriff McGrange shouted.
He was a fat man, an old man, but he was lethal with a pistol. He reminded Rick of the bad guy from the old shows his dad watched, about the two idiots and their orange car. McGrange, however, was supposedly a good man. Oddly enough, not that Jordan was about to check, the sheriff was a good man.
"You won't be able to stop me," the monstrous man grunted as he started marching forward, "Take your best shot!"
McGrange shook his head sadly. He knew it would come to this, but it was still sad. He leveled his revolver and squeezed the trigger.
Rick felt fire slam into his chest. He looked to see a glowing bullet drop from his right pectoral and drop to the pavement. There was a burn mark on his skin.
"That stung," he muttered as he rubbed the spot, "You pinched me!"
McGrange fired again, his magic pistol blazing fiery round after fiery round into the assailant. He knew he couldn't stop the man, he wasn't strong or quick enough, but he could buy the students time to escape. He just hoped it was enough.
Unfortunately, Rick was through taking things slow. In one vault, he was in front of the sheriff. Using his momentum, he shoulder-checked the old man into the metal and glass front doors of the school, smashing him into the lobby.
When he walked in to check on the damage, he found Principal Gloria Dennis looking over the broken man. Amazingly, McGrange seemed to still be alive. Rick would correct that after he had his fun with the principal.
"Mm!" he grunted as he swaggered over to her, "If we'd had more ladies like you on the faculty while I was in, I probably would have stayed... You probably would have had to kick me out after a while, but we'd be right back here, I think."
"You animal, have you no shame?"
"Have you seen my codpiece?"
The woman covered her mouth in horror and staggered away. She tripped over some rubble and started backing away like she was in some kind of horror movie. Sheriff McGrange couldn't move, and nothing seemed to be stopping Rick as he paced slowly toward the stumbling and scrabbling woman.
Just as he was about to get a hand on her, though, the flagpole smacked into his face. It hurt, a lot, but not as much as the lightning that coursed through the metal and exploded out at him.
As he started to come to, a red-gloved hand picked him upright roughly and threw him back out the front doors. When he hit the ground, he tumbled and rolled for several hundred feet. When he sat up, a SWAT truck from Lousiville crashed into his head.
This still wasn't enough to stop him. Rick got back up and pushed the truck back, but Statesman caught him from behind by wrapping his forearm around his collar and hurled the lunatic into the trunk of a tree.
Coughing, Rick tried to deflect Statesman as he rained blows upon him. If the young man were able to see, he would probably be in awe of the fact he was squaring off against one of the world's greatest champions, if not the greatest.
However, this was also some of the first pain he'd felt all day, and he was suffering a natural reaction to all of it. He felt another fist slam into his belly, and another hit his jaw, wheeling him around. When the lightning struck him again, he saw a bright flash and everything went dark.
Looking down on the broken body, Statesman knew exactly what his old friend would say. Lord Recluse would be telling him to finish the job and execute the young man right then and there. However, he couldn't bring himself to do it. It was wrong.
----------
--Two Weeks Later: Paragon City: Brickstown: The Zigursky "Ziggurat" Penitentiary--
"Why do you keep coming here?" Sister Psyche asked as they walked down to the cell holding the inmate who referred to himself as "Ransack."
He was kept deep. Very deep. There were some powerful cells down there, constructed of Impervium alloys. They'd been installed after the Great Breakout, the one in which Arachnos Fliers were seen flitting in and out of the area. Statesman knew Arachnos had absconded with countless criminals now seen in the Isles, but they largely made trouble there now, so it was an issue better left for another day.
These cells were designed to keep such situations like that from happening again. They were expensive, to be certain, but they were installed for the really nasty criminals. There were currently enough for the ruling members of the Council, Nemesis, and Lord Recluse (though Statesman had a feeling even these couldn't stop him). The one meant for the leader of Arachnos was currently being used for someone else, however.
"Rick Jordan," Statesman said into the cell, "Can you hear me?"
"Let me out," came the bitter growl in reply.
"I need you to tell me where you came from."
"I already told you. Smallton, Kentucky. I woke up like this one day."
Paragon's champion turned to his associate and she shrugged.
"It's the same as last time," she explained to him, "His mind is a hideous maze... Near as I can tell, he's telling the truth. He woke up, and he was powerful... Almost as powerful as you."
"That's what I was afraid of," Statesman sighed and started leading her away, "I actually had to talk to St-... Recluse... He said he had nothing to do with that bizarre young man, and for once, I believed him. He's... He feels wrong."
"I know what you mean," Psyche shuddered a little at the memory of the things she'd seen inside the man's mind.
There wasn't much there, to be honest. Just gray walls and a moonlit sky with no stars. Every corridor led to some aspect of the man, but it was mostly the same male fantasies she found in almost every man she read. Still, there was something odd about it all. It was like a tint, or a stain on all of Rick's thoughts.
"Recluse and I had to do something for our powers, though," Marcus sighed as he rubbed his temple through the spandex, "It doesn't make sense that he just 'woke up' with power..."
"What's the problem, though?" Sister Psyche asked, "I mean, you caught him. He's imprisoned, and it's not like he'll be able to get out anytime soon."
They looked to each other, as if her saying that had done something to the fabric of the universe.
"We'll deal with it if it happens," Statesman sighed, "What I'm getting at, though, is somebody was using that boy... He or she, or... Whatever... He was given that power and set loose on the world."
"Do you think he's... Incarnate?"
"Not exactly," the tanker sighed, "But it's damn close..."
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((I want to stress just how difficult this was to write. When a character is meant to be "The Enemy" I expect it to be truly demented when it comes to how far the villain will go. Presented here is a monster, one without remorse, or even desire to be "evil," he just is. He does what he does because he can, and it takes someone incredibly powerful to stop him.
Also, I don't mean for this guy to be the Joker-esque character for CoH/V. This guy is mine, and I've got his (very brief) future planned out already. Like most of my characters, he's relegated to the fringe of the world's events, largely forgotten by the movers-and-shakers. I hope I haven't crossed any bounds or pushed any limits, but this guy isn't a cartoon.
If anybody's offended by the imagery, whether implied or explicit, I apologize here. It's grotesque, but it's also not meant to be pretty.))
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.