Frank Fisticuffs by Soberguy  | TEAM: Freelance Villain |  | SECTOR: LOWTOWN |  | KIT CLASS: Everyman |
|  |  |  Winning Streak - 4 wins, no losses! |
| Fight Record
League Wins: 0
League Losses: 0
Out Of League Wins: 4
Out of League Losses: 0
Total Wins: 4
Total Losses: 0
Grounds Keeper Landon! - Win 12-8
Armani - Win 17-6
Quietus - Win 12-10
Bizarre Lust Triangle - Win 15-6
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 | Grasping the bottle of liquor with one hand, he took a long, desperate swig before pouring some onto the partially bandaged knuckles of his other hand. He winced in pain as the lukewarm liquid washed over his bloody, beaten fist � purifying his weapon of choice in traditional Lowtown fashion. She watched him from her position on the floor as best she could. One eye had swollen up so badly that it had essentially closed altogether, and the vision in the other was blurry and unclear. Had her arms not been tied behind her back, she would try to pull herself up. Were her leg not broken, she would run. If her mouth were not gagged, she might scream for help. As none of those options were open to her, she remained on the cold floor � silent, beaten, terrified. For a long time the two remained in silence, the peace and stillness belaying the fierceness of their battle only moments before. He sat there lost in his own thoughts until finally, without looking at her, he began to speak. "I know you're sore about what I did to your husband," he said with little emotion, "and I know you think what I'm going to do to you is unfair. Now that I'm finally here at the end, I'm not so sure what's fair anymore myself. But I do know something lady, and that's what I've lost. What you people have taken from me. My life. My dignity. My freedom. My home. My neighbourhood. My family." She watched as he began to cry, the tears rolling down over his worn and bloodied face, trying desperately to understand. Since all this had begun, they had worked day and night to discover who was responsible � who was the monster that had been killing off their comrades one by one. Now that she knew, the pieces of the equation still didn't add up. Pulling himself back from the brink, he stood and paced along the far wall of the room � never facing her, never looking her in the eye. "So before I do what needs doing, I'm going to tell you a little story. A little story about a man � not a superhero, not a cop � but an ordinary man. A good, honest, hard-working man. About how that good man went from a happy life to losing everything he held dear in one night." Finally looking her in the face, he walked menacingly towards her, his eyes no longer filled with tears, but instead burning with an unstoppable rage. She averted her eyes in fear, but to no avail. Bending down, he grabbed her by the back for the hair and pulled her painfully upwards to look him in the face. "I'm going to tell you the story, bitch, of how the KPD and your precious Sentinels of Liberty and Justice destroyed my life. I'm going to tell you about Frank Fistacuffs." | Personality: Five months earlier. Dr. Rupert sat in the committee chambers of the Lancaster Correctional Facility's review board. Although these release meetings were usually a dull display of formalities and rubber stamping, this particular case had caused and unusual amount of debate. "Mr. Fisticuffs, despite his long history of violent behaviour and particularly gruesome crime, has shown himself to be a model prisoner," argued Dr. Los, "not one incident of note on record. Though somewhat withdrawn, I have found no evidence to indicate that he presents any further threat." Dr. Rupert shuffled through his notes and quickly countered, "I'm afraid I have to disagree with Dr. Los in this instance. In my sessions with him, it is clear that he has internalized all of his violent tendencies. Before the murder, he expressed these impulses largely through minor acts of vigilantism but now are we to believe that he has just shut that part of him off?" "Reformation is the whole point of the penal system, Dr. Rupert � is this not exactly what we are looking for in our inmates?" "He isn't reformed. He's storing up all that violence for a greater purpose. Early in his incarceration he expressed anger at the KPD and later, the Sentinels for his plight. I fear they may be his next targets." "We cannot extend a court-ordered sentence just because you have a professional hunch, Dr. Rupert," scolded the committee chairman. "Sir, Mr. Fisticuffs was a good man with a good life until the night he killed Ms. Charon. The file details what happened to his family. What happens to a man like that, when he has lost everything, when he has hit rock bottom and beyond? What happens when he blames that fall on someone else?" |
 | | Strength: | Standard Normal human strength. | Agility: | Standard Normal human agility. | | Body: | Standard Normal human endurance. | Mind: | Standard Normal human mental resources. |
 | His Life Before |
Releasing his grip and shoving her roughly to the floor again, Frank walked to the small window on the far wall of the nearly empty room. Looking up at the twinkling lights of the night sky, he began to tell his tale. "I grew up in the gutter � smack dab in the middle of Lowtown in a little area called Dog Alley. It was only a few square blocks of urban sprawl, but to me it was home. It was a rough place to grow up, but I was a tough kid. Got in my first fistfight when I was three and just never seemed to stop. Took a lot of beatings � some worse than I've just given you � but it made me strong, made me determined. In time, I was dishing it out a lot more than I was receiving, but I wasn't going to be like those drugged-out punks roaming the back alleys. I fought the good fight and kept the neighbourhood free of hoods and scumbags who tried to drag us down. That was my home, my neighbourhood, my family � all I had to offer was my fists, but I gave them gladly... and often." Looking down at his bloodied hands he paused for a moment, remembering all that they had endured. Turning away from the window, he continued. "So anyhow I'm out for a walk one night and hear a commotion in the alley down on Berg Street. I duck in and see some lowlife trying to grab a purse away from some girl. It had been a while since I had scrapped, since most of these punks knew well enough to stay away from my turf, so I was itching to dish out a beating. As I rushed him though, his eyes started glowing and he fired some kinda beam at me. Lasers or plasma or whatever the hell it is you people let loose. Anyhow, the damn thing fizzled out into nothing before it even touched me. That's when I started to figure that I was born different too � but that part you've already found out the hard way. So I lay in with the ol' fists and just as I'm about to finish him, he throws a knife. Back then, I didn't know my powers would take care of that too, so I did what anyone would do. I ducked. The girl standing behind me didn't. When the police showed up a few seconds later, the punk was gone and I was kneeling next to a girl with a knife in her throat." He stopped again as though physically immobilized by the weight of the memory. "With my priors for assault and some fingerprints on a knife I never touched, it was a slam dunk. 15 years in maximum security."
 | His Life After |
She listened to his story from the floor, but tragic though it was she was more interested in freeing her hands. When you are a Sentinel for as long as she was, your training, your experience start to take over in times like this. Slowly, gently, she worked the ropes so as not to reveal what it was she was doing behind her back as he continued his tale of woe. "I bet you don't know what prison is like, do you?" asked Frank rhetorically, "It's hard. You know going in that it's going to be hard, but you're never quite prepared for it, y'know? The streets were tough but this � this was like living in amongst wild animals. It was dehumanizing. It was primal. It changed me. While in the joint, I started doing some digging for my appeal to keep me sane. It's amazing what you can find out with some smarts and little hustling � even while trapped in the pen. Turns out the girl who was killed was the daughter of some bigwig at City Hall, which explains why the KPD rushed to pin it on me. My case was actually pretty winnable until those prints showed up on the lab tests. You think that's a coincidence, those prints magically appearing on a knife I never touched? The KPD set me up � plain and simple. My only hope was to track down the punk who killed her, but by the time my research put a name to the face, he was already dead." Frank's anger grew and he marched back over to her, kneeling down so she could hear him clearly. "This next part is the real kicker so listen close � it's the part that explains why I'm here right now. See the SLJ had caught this punk two days earlier. They had him, and they let him go. Why? They hoped he'd lead them to his employer, Toc Darkone. Only you dumbasses lost him, and when he was out of your sight he killed that girl and got me sent to prison! And when you finally caught up with him the next day, no one bothered to put two and two together on the mugging. No, you had bigger fish to fry right? You wanted Darkone, so who cares about poor Frank Fisticuffs and his family, right? You goddamned arrogant bastards!" He lunged out and struck her once again in the face, then stood up and hurled his chair against the wall. Gathering his composure slightly, he continued, "My family stuck by me for as long as they could, but without me to provide for them my mother and little brother had to pack up and move to Looking Glass to stay with my sister. That was hard for them. Dog Alley was their home. They were there the day of the explosion too. Not ground zero mind you, but far enough away that instead of being instantly obliterated, they were all burned alive waiting for someone to help them. The SLJ was late that day too, weren't you? Showed up long after the damage was done to clean up the Day Shift's mess. Too late for the Fisticuffs, but I don't think any of you shed a tear for us, did you?"
 | Resistances: Senshi |
The pain in her broken leg had gone from bad to worse, and it was only her training and willpower which kept her from passing out from the pain. She continued to try and loosen her bonds, wondering when her increasingly unstable captor might lash out at her again. Leaning his head against the wall and resting his battered palms on its cool surface, he continued his story. "15 years after they tossed me in, they tossed me out. By then, I was stone cold. I had fought for survival in there every single day and it had taken its toll. I knew the KPD had put the fix on me, but I could never prove it � they saw to that. My lawyer tried to call you Sentinels to the mat for their part, but you know all about the friends the Sentinels have in high places, don't you?" He picked the chair up off the floor and sat down again, shuffling his chair closer to her so he loom over her as he continued. "So I went back to Dog Alley, but it wasn't the same. Without me to protect it, the lowlifes had worked their way back in and taken over. Most of my friends had already moved away and the few that remained wouldn't speak to me. I even stopped by my old house just to maybe pick me up a bit and you know what I found? It was a crackhouse. The home my family lived in for four generations left to rot while junkies got their fix inside. I wasn't about to let that happen. I doused that place in gasoline and lit a match with those scumbag crackheads still inside. As I watched it burn and listened to the screams, some guy with a sword jumps in out of nowhere and starts dragging these punks out. You probably thought the Clumsy Grenadier's death was accidental right? Wrong. When he got back onto the lawn with a junkie in tow, I ran up and popped him straight in the chops. He swung his sword, but my nullification field took care of that. He tried to summon weapons from thin air and leap away to safety, but none of that worked with me around. For all his ridiculous bantering, I beat him to a pulp, lady, and loved every minute of it, then I tossed him back in and let him burn. The SLJ, the KPD... all of you stood around and watched my neighbourhood decay into a slum and you showed up THEN? It took someone razing it to the ground before anyone took notice, before anyone bothered to help? It was then that I knew what had to be done, and it was then that I knew I could do it."
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| Resistances: Mentalist |
"I asked around a bit and quickly figured out where to go next," Frank continued, "I had heard tell that some old Sentinel had taken up residence in Foxtail Park. It was only a few blocks away from Dog Alley, but as I made the journey by foot it was a night and day difference. The streets went from filthy to clean. Boarded up businesses to thriving mom and pops. Kids playing in the street. As I marched towards the park my anger grew with each beautifully sculpted lawn and friendly hello. On a bench in the park was the old wizard, but I had to wait a while to get him alone. As I approached, I called him out. I asked him why he helps these people, why he helps this neighbourhood and no other. He was relaxed at first � calm and jovial as he tried to explain with some philosophical double-speak his motives � but as I drew closer, he became more tense. I imagine he was trying to stop me from advancing, but found his powers somewhat lacking. It was easy for him, a being of unimaginable power, to just sit there all day and help people and feel good about himself. His powers kept his foes at bay and his followers in awe. But not me. I was his dose of reality that day � his lesson in what it was like to be vulnerable, afraid... human. He had been there for months helping these people while ten blocks westward Dog Valley was being ravaged by the very punks he helped the Foxtailers turf out." Stooping down to address her more directly, Frank asked, "What gives you people the right to make those kind of decisions? To help people when and where it suits you? To destroy one life and build up another?" Leaning back in the chair, Frank got a menacing look in his eye. "You people like to play God just because you can. The old man did, whether he admitted it or not. Without his powers though, he was no God. He was just a scared old man begging for his life, and I think when you people finally found him � when you saw what I was able to do to him � you all got a little scared, didn't you?"
 | Joe Bigg Gunns |
Standing again, Frank removed a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it with a match. Taking a drag from between his cut lips, he continued to preach to his captive audience, "Now that I had your attention, I needed to get a little more bold if I were to see my plan through to completion. The most obvious target was difficult to reach, so I waited until the right opportunity. When you've done 15 years in prison, waiting just comes naturally. Finally, the famous Joe Bigg Gunns came down from his impregnable ivory tower at KOMBG HQ to slum it at a production factory." Even though tied and gagged on the floor, Frank could sense his captive's anger. "Hitting close to home am I? I knew you two were close � striking a little further up the food chain got you thinking, didn't it? Really, for a living legend amongst the Sentinels, I expected more. I slipped past security and laid it out for him � who I was, why I was there. His reaction was predictable � grab the nearest, biggest gun he could. Of course none of them worked. They rusted in his hands, or fell apart or crumbled to dust the moment he pointed one at me. Know how many guns he had in that little office? Seventeen � and that's just the ones I could find. How many more did his factories build? Thousands? Millions? He didn't seem to mind that a lot of them wound up in the hands of the punks who preyed upon Dog Alley or the corrupt cops who failed to protect us. He made his money, didn't he, and going out now and then to play superhero made him sleep better at night. Hypocrite." Taking another long drag from his cigarette, he bent down long enough to blow it in her face. "You saw what I did to him didn't you? You saw how I left him. Tough to face isn't it � when gods amongst men suddenly find themselves mortal?"
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| Resistances: Entity |
Frank walked to the table and snuffed out what remained of his cigarette. He had been talking so much, most had simply burned away to ashes dropped to the floor without ever reaching his lips. She watched as he leaned his back up against the wall, just to the left of the window. Through the small pane, she could see the dawn beginning to break, and the trees of the forest just outside the cabin. They were supposed to be safe here. This was supposed to be their secret. "In all the fuss over Joe's murder, no one seemed to notice that I had stolen his PDA," noted Frank, folding his arms, "In that little device I had all the information I needed. Agendas. Phone numbers. Addresses." It was only then that she realized how it was that he had found them, but there was little time to ponder it before he continued. "One of the events co-sponsored by KOMBG in particular caught my eye. It was a police community event at a school on the edge of the Dog Alley border. A lot of kids from my neighbourhood went there. Of special interest was the guest speaker � Captain Khazan, the so-called hero of the people. What a crock. Where was he when these kids' parents were being forced out by thugs and gangbangers? Where was the people's champion when thousands were killed in Looking Glass? Nowhere. Now he shows up to talk to our kids about trusting and supporting the cops? The cops who let their streets get overrun by scum? The cops who set up innocent citizens to avoid a public relations disaster? It was more than I could bear. I went down there and saw his speech. I saw his photo op handshakes with the Chief of the KPD. I saw the kids admiring this phony, this traitor to his community! He was nothing before he got his powers. He didn't lift a finger to help anyone until he was pretty much invulnerable, and even then he was just a hopeless dupe of the SLJ!" Calming himself, he continued, "but everyone knows how that day ended up. The sight of this invulnerable superman beaten to death � everyone assumed it was some knew menace armed with super-strength. I mean, how else could you explain it? Of course, once I had you following all the wrong leads, I could start laying the groundwork for my real plan."
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| Resistances: Avatar |
She watched and listened from the floor, helpless and alone. Despite her efforts, she could not loosen her restraints. Without her powers, without her sword, there was no way to free herself. Even if she did, what could she do as battered as she was? A rescue. Her last hope. Surely, her security force would be staging something soon � or the Sentinels. Someone, anyone, who could get her away from this madman. Undeterred, Frank continued � he was only barely speaking to his captive now. The words instead flowed out under the own power and to their own ends � an unstoppable last confession that had weighed upon him for too long. "From Bigg Gunns PDA I found a cell phone number for Jack Spanky. That phone message he received � the one that claimed that it was the KPD who had been behind the murders and that I had the proof � that was me. Too bad the message was found posthumously. When I asked Spanky to meet me alone and tell no one, I took a big risk. I gambled that his need for answers to who was killing his friends would outweigh his common sense. He did show up for the meeting though, and when I revealed to him who really did in his buddies he wound up for the spank of a lifetime. Too bad his powers didn't work around me. It might bring you some comfort to know that he put up a good fight all the same � probably the toughest of the lot before your husband. He'd been in the SLJ a long time. This was HIS family � and in the end he knew my pain, my anger, my desperation. Leaving the KPD uniform fabric in his hands was enough to get you people thinking, and when the voice mail message was leaked to the press, it caused a full-out investigation."
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| Resistances: Gadgeteer |
Pacing the floor again, Frank walked back and forth along the wood planks beneath his feet. As he moved in front of the window, she could see only his silhouette contrasted against the bright morning light which had begun to flood in from outside. Her leg was numb now and she felt cold � shock was setting in and it wouldn't be long until she was unconscious. She prayed that help would arrive in time, and her attackers long and sinister tale was buying her time. "Not everyone bought the KPD theory, though," Frank admitted, "I've always let my fists do the thinking, so this set-up wasn't exactly playing to my strengths. That doctor of yours � Timothy � word was he asking questions around town. See he still couldn't figure how the KPD could pull off the killings, even if they had a motive. I hadn't thought of that. To boot, beating a man to death is a very personal way to kill someone. I could, because it was something that needed doing, but a cop? Not likely. It didn't add up to him and while everyone on the planet was looking for crooked cops with a beef against the Sentinels, he was quietly looking in the opposite direction. I still don't know how he got my name � maybe I should have asked him before I killed him � but when he came to ask me a few questions, I had a feeling he had me figured out. Maybe it was the look in my eye. Maybe it was the way I answered his questions. He had me pegged. A man that smart � a man with that much insight � should've known better than to dedicate his life to the Sentinels. If he had used his smarts to look at my case, maybe I wouldn't have spent 15 years rotting in a cell. But why should he right? Who cares about the some Lowtown nobody when he could be tracking down The Fallen or Mr. Graves or someone? In the end who cares, he died just as surely as the others. After I altered his notes to implicate the KPD that sealed the deal for a lot of people. I mean, if one of the Sentinels own eggheads thought it was so, maybe it was, right?"
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| Resistances: Cyberware |
Frank walked over to his captive and hoisted her roughly to her feet. With her leg still broken, she hobbled and struggled to keep herself upright, even with her captor roughly holding her by the arm. "Story's almost done lady," said Frank matter-of-factly, "time to get ready." Dragging her to the middle of the room he looped a long rope around her torso and began to tie to tightly as he continued, "With the Sentinels and the public looking at the KPD with suspicion, all hell started to break loose. Protests. Boycotts. Police being pelted with eggs. KPD rank and file refusing to assist supers. It was exactly what you both deserved, but I had more in mind. My life wasn't inconvenienced or damaged, it was destroyed � and I couldn't stop until you had been too." Finishing his knots, he flung the long end over a wooden beam on the cabin's ceiling. "I had gotten in some hard body shots, but if you're gonna win a fistfight, you need to hit the head. You need some knockout punches. That's why the next target on my list was Uberman � the SLJ's official leader." Pulling the rope tightly, he tied it off to the far wall such that it held her upright despite her broken leg. The swaying movement still caused her considerable pain, however, but she stifled her tears. She wouldn't let him have that satisfaction. "Uberman was pretty easy to draw out actually, but I won't bore you with those details. Suffice to say, when we squared off he had a lot to say about what I had done. He called me a monster. He called me inhuman. Inhuman � how's that for irony? A man so detached from humanity he lives in a ten foot tall tin suit? He stood there lecturing me about right and wrong because I killed people who had it coming. What about all the lives they've ruined? Was he saying that the lives of those Sentinels were worth more than my life? My mother's life? My brother and sister's? At least I had the balls to meet them face to face. He hides behind video monitors and thermal scans and superheroic double-speak so that he doesn't HAVE to face the lives he's ruined. Hell, most the time he isn't even aware. We're like ants to you people � a nuisance that gets underfoot but otherwise barely noticed. My powers bring you down here with the rest of us ants. Down in the gutters and the slums and dives of Lowtown like the rest of us, and here we're your equal. Here it's not the man with the most powerful armour who wins, but the one with the greatest resolve. It's a lesson Uberman found out, didn't he? I bet you didn't know that all that was left of that monster under the suit was a brain and a spine, did you? Inhuman. You'd think he of all people would know what that really was."
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| Resistances: Sorcerer |
Facing her at last eye to eye, Frank stood there in silence for a moment. Looking into her swollen, bloody face, he wondered how long it took his sister to die after Looking Glass was hit. A minute? Three minutes? Ten minutes? His resolve reaffirmed with one final shot of liquor, he placed the bottle on the floor and finished his story. "So that brings me to you. You and Ryoko. The last great bastions of the Sentinels of Liberty and Justice. Enshrined by the masses you walk upon as the leaders of our nation. Mr. President put up quite a fight didn't he? Even without his powers and his weapons, I thought he had me. If you hadn't been so busy shouting "FIREBALL" maybe I wouldn't have broken that leg. Maybe you could have saved him. Maybe my plan could have failed right here in the cabin you fled to while your comrades were dying. Like I said, I know you're sore about what I did to Ryoko, but if anyone had it coming, it was him. Once I've done what needs doing, and people find the KPD slugs I fired into your security force and the other clues I'm going to plant, I'll be finished. When the KPD knock off a few Sentinels, that's a scandal. When they bump off the President? That's a coup." Cracking his knuckles loudly, he wrapped his bloodied fists tightly with cloth. "A coup, Ms. D'Larthi, is war. Between the KPD and the Sentinels. Exactly what you both deserve." Elwin's resolved shattered and she sobbed quietly beneath her gag as the blows began to land. As she slipped quietly into unconsciousness, Frank too began to cry. He never wanted this. He never asked for this. Like always, he just went where his fists led him � and now that he had set in motion the destruction of those who had ruined his life, he could head to his corner for a rest before starting the next round.
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