Michael Bain
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Michael Bain | |
| Player: @Rebel FireStorm | |
| Origin: | Mutant |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Arachnos Widow |
| Threat Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Michael Bain |
| Known Aliases: | Confidential |
| Species: | Metahuman |
| Age: | 29 |
| Height: | 6'0" |
| Weight: | 172 lbs |
| Eye Color: | Silver-gray |
| Hair Color: | Black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | ' |
| Occupation: | Unemployed |
| Place of Birth: | Etoile Isles |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Rachael Bain, daughter |
| Known Powers | |
| Super Speed/Reflexes, mild telekinesis | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Claw/Arachnos fighting styles, martial arts, sword fighting abilities | |
| Equipment | |
| Stealth Cloaking armband with friend teleporter, Arachnos Night Widow gear including Widow claws. | |
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Contents |
History
Early Years
As far as he knows, Michael was born in the Isles to parents he never knew. They were quite possibly killed by Arachnos, though he never sought them out. Instead, he was taken at age 4 and raised by Arachnos ideology, under a special Arachnos program to indoctrinate potential metahuman soldiers and assassins. At age 6, he began training as an Arachnos elite assassin.
Arachnos Training and Service
Training
Trained rigorously with both blade techniques, and practice claws, Michael emerged as one of the best in his group. He was always quicker than everyone else, even before his mutation began to fully manifest. At age 13, Michael made his first kill, another trainee, in a 'sparing' match, by essentially beating the other man to death. Having been subject to violence since the beginning of his training, Arachnos found themselves a seemingly conscious-less killer. Between that and his mutant gift of super speed and super reflexes, Michael became a full fledged assassin by the age of 16. He received his Widow Claw implants as a reward, a painful surgery that he quickly recovered from, due to his pure willpower and elevated healing factor.
Service
In the first two years of his service, Michael killed around a dozen people, both corrupt and innocent. He made small mistakes just as anyone else, but overall performed exceptionally well by Arachnos standards. He did, however, appear to have a lack of ambition to gain any more power than he currently held. This worried some of the other assassins who believed he had hidden agendas. Michael was simply the perfect tool. Submerged in Arachnos loyalty for as long as he could remember, he served them vigorously and without question. By the time he neared his second year, he was the very best in his original training group.
The Betrayal
Just a few months after his 18th birthday, Michael was accused of killing an Arbiter. Before he could attain proof of his innocence, a kill on sight order was placed on him. Unwilling to die for a crime he did not commit, and unable to clear his name, Michael fled into the Isles. The man who set him up, brother to the trainee Michael killed, sent out agents to track Michael down. After several failed attempts, one of the enforcers managed to shoot Michael in the head. Michael survived though, and spent the next month and a half recovering, hidden with an outside contact he trusted.
The Wolves Rage
During the time Michael spent recuperating, Arachnos spies discovered his location and sent a squad out to finish the job. They found his safe house, killed his contact, and tried to finish him off. With revenge in their minds, they proceeded to torture and punish the already taxed man. During the ordeal, something unusual occurred. Michael went into a blood-rage state, literally shredding his assailants with the claw implants before collapsing into unconsciousness. When he awoke, surrounded by mangled corpses and covered in blood, he was horrified at what he had done. He fled from the safe house, and found a place to find his nerves and to clean himself up. His will prevailed, and Michael decided he needed to find out what happened, why, and how to stop it, how to control it.
Search for the Cure
Over the next few years, Michael actively sought out causes and cures for his self-claimed "illness." In his quest, he met up with another assassin from his training, Rachael Wright. They had never been close, but she was the only one who saw through the false accusations and abandoned her duty as well, to seek Michael out and help him. She saved his life from another attack, and despite his protests, she promised to help him find the answers to his puzzle. The two of them worked side by side until Arachnos tracked them both down again. During the battle, Michael had another blood-rage episode, which was not satisfied by the death of the assassin. He turned on Rachael and attacked her. The battle lasted for hours until Rachael gave in and sacrificed her life for him.
Rachael
"I never got to tell her I loved her... I hope she knew." - Michael Bain
If anything, Rachael was a polar opposite of Michael. She was loud, out-going, flirty, sociable and, according to Michael, relentlessly annoying. He still doesn't know when she fell in love with him, if it was before the two years they spent together, or during their search. Michael was always oblivious, responding to her teasing and flirting with his anti-social annoyance. But she grew on him, and he began to treat her less like a kid sister and more like a close friend. Over time, they began to function like a pair of hands; each one moving and responding to the other, as if they always went together. Finally, Michael gave in. He gave his virginity to her at age twenty, and became her lover. Light affection became genuine caring, up until the point where the rage forced him to attack her. He never fought harder against anything as he did that rage, but the defect in his brain overtook him. He knew she probably could have killed him, as fatigued and wounded as he already was, but she stopped fighting. He put his fist through her stomach before the exhaustion overtook him, and passed out on top of her dying body. But she loved him, and struggled to stay alive, in agony, for hours until he awoke again. So she could tell him she loved him, and that she forgave him for killing her. Michael was so speechless, he did nothing but cry and hold her in his arms as the last strands of life fled from her body. One of his biggest regrets in life is that he wasn't able to let her know he loved her too.
Years Alone
The shock of his crime forced him into a self imposed isolation. He spent most his time taking lone hit contracts, as to not endanger any more of his allies. Various breathing exercises, tai chi, and meditation occupied Michael's free time, to keep himself from harming any innocents. There were incidents, especially when Arachnos was involved, and the animal inside him struck multiple times. Each blood-rage tore a hole through his heart and soul, and made him despise himself even more, for his weakness, for his incompetence, and for his horrific deeds he committed.
Sin Enterprises
During one of his random odd-jobs, Michael used a Sin office as a stake-out point. While he was there, he noticed the advances the company had made in medical science. After seven years of isolation, Michael broke down and applied for a lowly Powered Security job at Sin Enterprises. He was accepted on the condition that he visit one of the medical professionals and continue to live off-base until his illness was corrected. Because of this illness, many of the employees shunned Michael, not wanting anything to do with a man who might snap at any given moment. But among the super beings, he found immediate acceptance from two, Natasha Macabre and her mother Grim. Both had their own issues, like he did, and he took a liking to both. When the medical examiner finally got around to him, she discovered an Arachnos control chip implanted in his brain. The chip was damaged when he was shot and caused the blood-rages. Unable to fully remove the rage or the chip, it was decided to replace the chip with one that would ween Michael off the control drugs and help him control the Rage.
The Wolf Within
The surgery was a success, even though it didn't have the results Michael intended. The Rage was brought fully under control; he could slip into it, he could direct it, he could end it. The personality changes, though, were unexpected. As the control drugs slowly began to loose their grip, Michael's true personality began to emerge. Michael thought removing the chip would cause him to become less of an animal. He found out that it was really the only thing controlling the beast. Instead of the cool professional assassin he had once been, Michael became more and more animalistic and antisocial. His temper flared often and many times spiraled beyond his control. He found himself taking great pleasure in killing, in blood-bathing, and spent more and more time in the Rage. Outside combat, he only attached to a few people. But those few helped him control his temper and break out of the anti-socialism. His closest friend, a Crey experiment gone rogue, helped to convince him he was human, and not an animal. Though he still knows he has the animal side within him, struggling to be free. He eventually came to the decision to have the replacement chip removed completely. He hoped it would remove the rages from him and make him less dangerous, less impulsive, and more of a human. All traces of a consuming rage were removed, but the animalistic side of him only increased.
Leaving Sin
After jumping through hoops and doing whatever the bosses of Sin told him to, Michael realized he was just switching one leash for another. So he decided to resign before they decided to fire him. He sought shelter with another ex-employee, learning how to better fight and better meditate. He cleared his mind and an idea came to him. Vengeance, for what Arachnos had done to him. He rejoined them and cleared his name before beginning to build contacts and trust though constant jobs and vigilance.
Arachnos, Again
During his attempted revenge on Arachnos, he was blackmailed into working with the Ghost Widow. She threatened to kill Natasha if Michael refused to obey her. He didn't doubt her intent for an instant. While running the jobs to return her favors, Michael began to slowly give in to his bloodthirsty side and by the end, when given the option to be free, Michael decided to continue working for the Widow anyway, as one of her elite assassins. Though not publicly known, Michael as the Widow's minion has a reputation for being exceptionally brutal. Many consider him to be a completely deranged, bloodthirsty psychopath. Michael encourages these rumors, though, unlike with the Rage, he retains control over his blood lust at all times, sating it during missions or on his personal hunting grounds.
Natasha Bain
Once his lover, always his friend, Natasha was the result of a Crey experiment. Michael met her during his time at Sin, and she was the second woman he could ever claim 'lover'. He trusted her and loved her unlike anyone else before. She helped him see the human side within the animal. Months after his return to Arachnos, Natasha was brutally murdered while trying to defend her friends against a Malta invasion. Torn between grief and anger, Michael sought vengeance for his departed lover. For several weeks in a row, he did nothing but raid Malta warehouses and Malta bases, taking his anger out by starting a war with the entire group. The papers hailed it as a phenomenon, establishments full of dead, dismembered and slaughtered Malta soldiers with no sign of a culprit except for the single bloody hand print left on the wall of each place. The same hand print left by Michael himself on Natasha's tombstone. Only high level operatives ever learned the identity of their mystery assassin, and Michael has made sure they've been silenced. Natasha and Michael were never married, but he's given her his last name for reasons only known to Michael himself.
Departure from the Widow
It wasn't long after Natasha's death that Michael decided to leave Arachnos for the second time. He simply had no interest in being Ghost Widow's lap dog anymore. He had no trouble leaving the organization the second time, his achievements earning him enough fear and respect to simply be left alone. He believes that she knows better than to attempt to bring him back, or destroy him. Not through conventional means. If the Widow wishes to have her animal back, she'll have to play a much subtler game.
The Black Tie
"I've listened to Dream's vision before. It has been written on my heart for years before I met the man. He just put words to it." - Michael Bain
Michael never suspected he'd again give his loyalty so soon. But then he met Bad Dream. His entrance into Dream's world, and the Black Tie started out as a way to get revenge on Arachnos and Malta, for the wrong they had done to him. But after speaking extensively with the Tie's leader, Lord Bad Dream, Michael began to realize how much his own beliefs coincided with that of Dream's. Michael pledged his loyalty to Dream and the Black Tie, something he had never fully done since his early days in Arachnos. He became part of Dream's elite forces, the Black Guard, and would do anything to further the cause, his, Dream's, and the Black Tie's.
Raze
During his time at Black Tie, Michael sought to increase his power; something he had yet to do, confident in his mutation, his learned abilities, and his Arachnos training. But after facing many of the other super powered individuals in the Tie, Michael finally decided to try and unlock his telepathic and telekinetic potential. Through extensive use of the abilities he already had and through deep meditations, Michael's power began to grow. Little did Michael know, the more he drew on those powers, the weaker the barrier holding back the second conscience.
The Lone Wolf
All good things come to an end. Michael eventually came to believed Dream was just another puppet master, trying to pull his strings. And after an attempt at escape, Michael decided it would simply be best to head out on his own again, so he could deal with Dream on his own terms, should the man wish to drag him back to the web. He and Memory split apart, sending their daughter to live with a normal family, providing them with more than enough money to raise the child. Michael occasionally visits his daughter, sneaking into the room in the dead of night, just to spend a few private moments with her. He even moved to Paragon, to Founders' Falls, simply to be closer to Rachael.
Powers
Speed Mutation
Michael is able to run at amazing speeds. He usually sticks around 80 to 90 while running in the isles, to better navigate buildings and other hazards, but is able to run many times greater than that. At full speed, Michael can run past even the most sensitive motion detectors without triggering them. It allows him to dodge most attacks. He's been known to dodge bullets, even from close range. The incredible speed of his entire body and his metabolism gives him a much higher healing factor. Wounds will not heal before his eyes, but he can survive damage that would kill a normal person. Lesser flesh wounds will heal in a manner of hours.
Psychic Abilities
Mild, at best, are Michael's powers of the mind. He learned them as a Night Widow, but he wasn't with Arachnos long enough to realize their full potential. He can shield his own mind, and enter another's, but the ability is relatively weak. Most of his telepathic abilities are geared toward destruction and havoc, instead of information extraction. He can bust open a mind and cause pain or death, but lacks the finesse necessary to interrogate someone. Even after working with Ghost Widow herself, Michael's powers in this area haven't increased much. He just doesn't seem interested in utilizing them.
Abilities
Offensive
Michael is adept in several styles of Japanese blade fighting, including BattÅjutsu, Iaijutsu, and Kenjutsu. He also has advanced training in Tai Chi defensive martial arts, and some training in the Japanese Aikido fighting style. While training under an friend from another planet, he acquired several other blade and hand to hand combat techniques and styles that he keeps in reserve, to confuse and unbalance opponents. Michael never got rid of his Widow Claw implants and can still use them at any moment. He has been trained in the style of the Night Widows, along with another few he picked up while on his own. The claws seem to come out as a last resort, when he's weaponless, or when he's feeling particularly animalistic and wishes to get his hands bloody. With his Night Widow abilities also comes his telepathic abilities. Michael isn't very experienced with his psychic powers, and mostly uses them to harm or torture someone, or for destruction. He can set up a mind link, but most attempts to roust information forcibly ends with destroying the mind of his target.
Defensive
Michael uses a variety of acrobatic tricks and feats to dodge enemy attacks, which he incorporates into his speed powers. His strengthened and trained body allows him to easily climb, jump, and crawl through places most can't reach, bettering his abilities of an assassin. To compliment this, Michael has learned many techniques for avoiding detection, creating diversions and noise reduction. These learned talents are augmented by his camouflage wristband system. As part of his Arachnos training and conditioning, Michael has trained his mind, learning to close it off and twist his psychic abilities into a block toward other telepaths. Those with stronger powers may be able to penetrate his defenses, but full exposure to his lightning quick mind can harm or even destroy minds not able to keep up with his own.
Michael's Katana
Forged specifically for Michael, when he turned sixteen, Michael has guarded the blade with his life ever since. The blade is essentially able to slash through most kinds of magic, including demons, magical barriers, and other things. The blade's magically reinforced, to be nearly indestructible, and is worth a fortune. It is the only of its kind in existence, and the blade master who forged it was killed by Michael shortly after he received the blade, just to keep it from being duplicated. Unfortunately, the original katana was destroyed by a magic-devouring being, and Michael eventually replaced it with a modified version of the Vanguard energy weapons.
Personality
At the professional level, Michael appears to be a two-sided coin. One side is the cold blooded killer, who takes life without remorse, without sympathy, without emotion. The other, the angry, hate-filled, borderline insane deranged lunatic who has a savage thirst for blood and death. Both sides are present, and each comes out depending on the situation and Michael's mood. His fuse is either incredibly short or incredibly long and not even Michael himself can tell which it will be. No matter which side the coin shows, Michael still has constant control over himself and will accomplish his mission however he can, always with brutal efficiency. Socially, Michael is completely anti-social. He prefers small crowds, usually no more than three or four other people, and often moves alone, or with just a single person. He can be blatant, direct, and rude, quick to anger. Though it seems the presence of someone he trusts, respects, or loves has a soothing effect on him, making him more sociable and friendly. With friends, he tends to be a little less guarded, a little more cheerful, willing to join in with the joking and fun. Romantically, Michael is the polar opposite of what most people expect. He's attentive, affectionate, warm, kind, and loving. He treats his lover with care and respect and an almost innocence, often acting like a young fool in love. He trusts his partner completely. Even to the point where he has been willing to establish a mind link with some of them. He would do anything for a woman he loves, including sacrificing himself for them.
The Wolf
Michael often compares himself with a wolf. It's almost become a symbol for him. His personality aligns with most the qualities. He both has the feral, animal, destructive side to him, along with the noble and proud. He's a deadly efficient hunter, both alone and as a pack. He often works alone, but if a pack proves it's strength to him, he will give his loyalty and integrate himself fully with it. Before Black Tie, Michael always considered himself the lone wolf. Once he was recruited, he began to think more and more that the Tie was his pack, where he belonged. His dysfunctional and psychotic family. And that quality is what secures his loyalty so fiercely with the Tie. Since the birth of his daughter, and his engagement to Memory, Michael has become paranoid and very protective of both of them.
Michael's Mask
Since his days in Black Tie, Michael has worn, and made infamous, a white skull mask. He uses the stark contrast of the white mask to his black hair and clothing to construct an identity, built of fear. Since then, the mask has become a part of him; he's more recognizable as a villain with it than without. And even further, it symbolizes to him, the lack of identity and humanity he faced all his life. When he wears the mask, it lets him be a monster, as abhorrent as he wishes. An excuse to quench his almost vampiric thirst for blood.
Weaknesses
Michael is mortal and can be wounded or killed. He's tough, strong and incredibly fast, but far from invincible. He also has only basic resistances to psychics and other mind-bending individuals. To sustain his super speed abilities, Michael must digest large quantities of high-calorie food each day. His biggest weakness is his loyalty. He will do almost anything to protect or save those who he likes, respects, or trusts. His attachment and love for could be exploited, especially his connection to his daughter. Even the threat of harm to her could send him into a blood rage, where he abandons all logical thought.
Associates
Current
- Rachael Bain - His daughter, born on the thirty-first of July. Named after his past lover, in remembrance of what he lost, he loves his daughter with all his heart, and will do anything to protect her and her mother.
Past
- Lord Bad Dream - Dream is Michael's leader, the man Michael has sworn his loyalty to and readily follows his cause. Michael would like to think Dream has built up a healthy respect for Michael's methods of directness, confidence, and lethal efficiency. He considers Dream less a friend, but more an ally, a leader, and a brother in arms. Michael respects him, especially the way Dream has accepted and treated Michael as a part of his entourage. He serves Dream as part of his Black Guard, and hopes to become a well-trusted member of the Tie.
- Vandalist - The leader of the Repomen, Michael's first division, Memory and Michael seemed to get along well from the start. She was the first person he opened up to with the intimacies of his heart, and one of the few people he claims to trust. He fell in love with her and she with him, perusing a romantic relationship even after Michael transferred over to the Black Guard. Their bond has grown considerably, despite some of their differences in personality, and he's given his full self to her. Michael and Memory grew closer and closer over the few months they were together, and because of his experience with loss, he decided to make the final commitment. He asked Vandy to marry him in the same Sharkhead bar that they first deeply connected. She accepted, and Dream himself agreed to do the ceremony. Though things didn't quite work out between them, and they separated around six months later.
- Black Amaranth - Amaranth trained Michael in the Black Guard personally, a high honor. Though he knows she has a hard and rigid personality, Michael has seen some of the softer sides to her. He respects her and trusts her, and feels honored to work with a woman of her magnitude in protecting Dream. He considers her a good friend to him, and a comrade-in-arms and, like all others, would go to extraordinary lengths to save her. He's even admitted, once, that he could see himself with Amaranth, despite knowing it would never happen.
- Shivan Wrath - Back while he was working for Sin, Ryan was one of the few people who Michael would talk to, would allow even a little trust for. When Natasha was murdered, Ryan delivered the news to Michael himself. They lost contact after that meeting, not seeing each other again until after Michael joined with the Tie. Their meeting was more like a standoff, with Michael feeling resentful that Ryan never bothered showing up again after giving him the initial news. But since then, they have steadily been rebuilding their relationship, and Michael plans to ask Ryan to be his best man.
- Commander FireStorm - The Commander took Michael in after he left Sin, and Michael stayed and trained with the alien for months afterward, perfecting his blade technique, and learning new styles from the battle veteran. Their relationship was purely business, and often at odds at that. Eventually, the two had a falling out over Michael's return to Arachnos. The Commander believed Michael did what he did willingly, and did not approve of it. Neither has spoken to the other since Michael left, and Michael has no reason to.
- Laril Arcadia - A friend and fellow animalistic fighter, Michael met Laril long before Tasha's death. The two worked together often, going after members of the Phalanx several times. But Laril twisted Michael's grief over Natasha to fulfill her own desire for him, and after two brief, one night stands, Michael pulled away from her. He wanted to remain friends with her, but his anger over her blatant and selfish manipulation has kept him from contacting her again.
Deceased
- Rachael Wright - Michael's first lover, Rachael had trained with him in Arachnos as long as he could remember. She had always shown fleeting interest in him, but he had no idea the depth of it until Arachnos' betrayal. She abandoned them as well to aid Michael in his search for a cure for his blood rage. She was his first, and he loved her, even if he couldn't admit it before she died. She allowed Michael to kill her in the midst of a blood rage, rather than destroy him. She clung to life just long enough for him to revert back to normal, to understand that she loved him, and forgave him for ending her life. Michael still blames himself heavily for her death, though he only lets those closest to him see it. ((Rachael is an NPC from Michael's past, used to mold his personality and flesh out the character.))
- Shadow Bleed - Natasha Macabre, the only person who instantly accepted him when he first joined Sin, was the second love of Michael's life. A Crey experiment, Natasha was just as new to relationships as Michael was, if not more so. The two of them started dating in the middle of a Longbow base, surrounded by corpses. It was an innocent love, of young teenagers. Neither had gotten to experience that before. But it blossomed into a deep, caring for each other, and Michael gave his loyalty a second time. They separated briefly, after Michael quit Sin, but when they came back together, their love was stronger than ever. Ghost Widow used Natasha's life as blackmail to manipulate Michael in to service, swearing him to silence and threatening to kill Natasha if Michael wouldn't obey. But Natasha was murdered, by Malta, while trying to protect her friends. And Michael's rage was once again unleashed. He has sworn to make Malta burn for killing her, just as he has sworn the same to Arachnos for what happened to Rachael, and to him. Her death does not burn so heavily as Rachael's does, but he still blames himself regardless. He believes if he had stayed with Sin Enterprises, he would have been able to keep an eye on her, and maybe even have saved her from the Malta group. He misses her often, and hopes they may some day be reunited, somehow.
Random Trivia
- Michael is ticklish. It is one of his few debilitating weaknesses, though it only seems to work on bare skin.
- It is possible to recognize him, especially those who have worked closely with Ghost Widow.
- Michael has had the same trench coat for ten years. It's been burnt, ripped, torn, shredded, riddled with bullet holes, stained with blood, drenched, cut, and generally worn out. But he refuses to get a new one, and spends whatever it takes to get it repaired.
- His favorite color is black. His second favorite is red. Blood red.
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