From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Growing Up

Marcus Maxwell Jones, Jr. was born in the spring of 1976 to the struggling family of Marcus & Colleen Jones of Kansas City, Missouri. Strapped down with the financial burden of Marcus’ work as a doctoral student at the university as well as supporting their new son along with their five year old daughter Kimberly, Colleen worked nights as a waitress in addition to her nine-to-five job as a secretary. She was rarely home, and Marcus was often too absorbed in scholarly research to be much of a father. So, “Max,” as his parents began calling him, and Kimberly were left largely to their own devices growing up.

Times were hard and money was notoriously hard to come by. Max struggled in school as he began to view academia with contempt. His father had committed his life to it, yet the Jones had little to show for it past a small run down house in a run down part of town. Max began to get into fights a lot and began running with the wrong crowd. In a frustrated effort to save his son and keep pace with his current work as an Associate Professor of Art History, Marcus took his son to a local gym and paid an old, washed up trainer to work with Max.

And work they did. Max was unusually tall, standing nearly 6’ 5” when he was fifteen. The boxing gave him an outlet for his aggression, or nearly most of it. After a few months of training, Max came looking for some members of the local Crips who had jumped him a year earlier. In a sense, the boxing proved to be ruthlessly effective, and Max nearly beat two of the gang bangers to death. A third ran and rallied the troops. With an entire gang and local police looking for him, Max ran away from home and stayed gone for the better part of six months.

In time, Max came home, declared himself to the authorities, and was promptly arrested. As part of his sentencing, his records were to be sealed on the condition that, after a minimal stay at a juvenile detention facility, he returned to and completed high school or a vocational / technical training institute. He chose the latter.

At the Vo-Tech, Max got his first taste of the car bug while learning the ins and outs of a volunteer-donated 1986 Dhatsun pickup truck. For the first time in his life, Max found something he deeply enjoyed doing. He quickly rose to the top of his class and began tearing down and putting back together any motor he could get his hands on. He continued boxing with his old trainer and generally stayed out of trouble, spending too much time trying to gather the parts to get an old, rusted out hot rod up and running.

In the spring of 1994, Max completed his Vo-Tech studies with his GED and automotive mechanics ASE certification.

Off to the East Coast

Fed up with life in the Midwest and the ever escalating arguments with his father (who insisted that his son enroll at a local community college and aim towards graduating with his bachelor's degree, while Max just wanted to become a mechanic), eighteen year old Max set off to the Eastern Seaboard in the fall of 1994 driving his clunker of a '49 Ford. His retired Uncle Evan was able to procure Max a job with an old mechanic friend. There in Paragon City, Max began working full time at Olsen Bro's Automotive in Skyway City and living in a converted garage apartment with his Uncle Evan and Aunt Katherine, who both had the unfortunate wisdom to leave Max largely to his own devices.

At the same time, Max was introduced to the thriving rockabilly and alt-country scene by another mechanic who worked at the Olsen Bro's. Max jumped into the community with vigor and soon began playing double bass in a short-lived act called the Bombardier Boys. Work was going reasonably well, and he was beginning to distance himself from his past in Kansas City (with the exception of phone calls to Mom). He began getting a significant amount of tattoo work done; his first significant piece was an old-school cat head with devil horns on the inside of his right forearm. It quickly lead to the nickname that would stick: Hellcat.

It was at a Bombardier Boys show in 1996 when Max met Emily Paterson, "one hell of a smokin' fox" with black hair and a penchant for the color green and a certain seven foot tall, red haired car mechanic. The two quickly fell in love and were married a year later.

Falling on Hard Times

Things were going well for the newlyweds. Money was tight, but all you need is love, or so they thought. Work at Olsen Bro’s garage was going well enough, and Emily was able to pick up enough money working two part time jobs at a record store and bicycle shop for the two of them to make ends meet.

However, Emily quickly grew tired of the hectic schedule and little money the two jobs brought in. She began looking to a college education as a way to better her and Max’s financial struggles, even though he was firmly against the idea, seeing little value in higher education. Still, she continued pestering Max until he finally caved in, and in she enrolled in classes for the fall semester at Galaxy City Community College.

Regardless of the promise of better times once the diploma was to be had, the immediate effect of Emily’s newfound life as a student was the loss of income from her part time jobs. Max was struggling to pick up extra hours at work as was looking to pick up random side jobs as much as he could. Unfortunately, it was hard to make decent money with side jobs that consisted largely of rebuilding lawnmower motors and tricking out the tacky import tuners of rich kids from the suburbs.

Fortunate, for Max, was the day that he bemoaned his financial problems to one of the garage’s regulars, one Theo Esposito. Unbeknownst to Max, Theo was a mid level made man in The Family looking to hire on a wheelman for a couple jobs. Max happened to fit the bill perfectly.

The jobs seemed to be easy enough and paid remarkably well, all things considered. Theo gave Max a phone call with a time and place. Max drove to the location, usually out of the way warehouses and the like, and picked stuff up. The details varied, but the basics always remained the same: pick up the goods and drop them off. In time, Max became a reliable contact for Theo and the “side jobs” began coming in more and more frequently. The trips often took him across state lines, more frequently and further away from Emily every month.

But at any rate, the pay was good, and the two didn’t have to worry about how they were going to pay their bills. It was just a poor twist of fate that Emily began to feel abandoned by her husband’s near constant absence.

(To be continued...)