From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Deep into the Darkness I stared;
The Abyss peered back at me.
Subtly contest the Darkness I dared;
Away the Abyss did flee.

Contents 1 Early Life 2 Teenager 3 Mutation 4 Hero

Early Life

Justin Nathaniel Imre was born in a small middle-class suburban community in Minnesota. His parents, Nathaniel and Justine Imre, like most of the community, were God-fearing people with old-fashioned beliefs. As such, certain groups were patently not welcome in the community. Atheists, agnostics, pagans, gays and lesbians, mutants and other metahumans, and anyone that didn't fit the bigoted view of life the community held were outcasts in the community and not treated well.

As far as Justin can tell, he's always had the nightmares. His parents took him to the church and he was declared possessed of the devil after an inadequate psychological evaluation. After an amateur exorcism by the church leaders, Justin's nightmares went away. At least as far as his parents and the rest of the community were concerned. Justin simply failed to report any further incidences so as to keep the bad church leaders away. Similar incidences with other children instilled certain anti-church ideas into a group of children that would later form small gangs to lash out with their anger.

Teenager

After a relatively normal childhood, Justin would help form one of these gangs. They didn't have names as such, referred to by their geographical locations. The Eastsiders lived in the east side of town. The Auburners lived in the southwest by the Auburn Power Plant and most of their families had at least one parent working there. The Downtownees lived downtown, the Northenders lived up north, and the Miners lived in the west where the mines were, despite the mines being inactive. Then come the Imreans, Justin's group. They lived in the southeast near the Imre Memorial Hospital, named after some ancestor of Justin's.

Calling these groups gangs might, by modern standard, seem rather laughable, as mostly they just hung out and made fun of other groups. They did, however, vandalize rival territories and occasionally got into minor fights. Brawling, since guns were never even thought to be added to the equation, though the occasional knife might. The parents never knew who was in a gang and who wasn't. Few of the children displayed tendencies that might indicate such activity at home.

After a more strict curfew law was passed, things were to the point that an escalation of activity was imminent. Justin, however, would instigate something else entirely. His nightmares had become worse lately, though he never told his parents. Then they began to bleed into daydreams. After a couple weeks, on an otherwise normal day, sitting in a boring class at school like anyone else, the extraordinary happened. Just was used to the sights and sounds in his head, filtered through his consciousness. But he was not prepared for the events that were to transpire.

Mutation

The nightmares not only crept into his waking thoughts that day, but so did smells and tastes and, most disturbing of all, the feelings. Twisted emotions Justin couldn't even name flowed through his mind while dark energy flowed through his body. A burst of both swept the room. Those near him were weakened and thrown from their seats. The entire room felt the pain, the nausea, and the dark sensations. And they all knew where it came from. Justin fell to the floor, screaming in agony as his body was twisted to fit the distorted thoughts.

With obsidian black skin, cobalt blue hair, glowing violet eyes, and a new tail with a spaded end, Just was vied immediately by the teacher as an extreme demonic possession. Justin would have none of that, though. When an attempt was made to take him to the principal so he could be handed over to the church, Justin emitted dark energy from his skin in a sort of shield cloud and enveloped his fists in a wrap of dark energy that left some energy in the teacher when he pushed him away. He ran that day, not about to live in a town such as that any longer. Not now that he no longer fit into the narrow specifications of an upright citizen.

Justin bounced from town to city to town, doing his best to hide his appearance. He lived on the streets, able to survive better than most as he could summon dark energy, both in a protective manner and as an offensive aid in melee. His powers lay stagnant at such a stage for quite some time. By the time he had reached his thirties, he had noticed one thing. Despite physiological maturation from his teens to his twenties, he didn't really age into his thirties. By the time his forties came around and he still looked to be in his early twenties, he knew that something was keeping him young. He didn't know how, but he figured his mutation and connection to the dark realm were doing it.

Hero

It was then he decided that he couldn't live a life like this any more if he was going to live longer than most. He needed a path in life and that path would be put before him soon. The next day, as he was walking toward one of the city's homeless shelters for some food, he came across a couple of thugs harassing a businessman who apparently couldn't give them the protection money they demanded. Harassment had become physical and the man's wife, Justin assumed, began screaming for them to stop and calling for help from neighboring business owners who wanted nothing to do with the incident.

Justin sprinted over and told the thugs to stop. One look at him and they hesitated. Justin, however, didn't. Dark energy flowed around him and he wrapped it around the fist he threw at the one thug. The brawl, two on one, didn't seem fair. Justin prevailed, though. After knocking the two out, he looked over at the frightened business owner and his wife. They pleaded for him not to hurt them, afraid he was some demon from hell or something. He simply smiled and nodded a goodbye before he fled the scene.

Similar incidents caught the attention of the police and the local crime organization, and of course those people who looked for UFOs, ghosts, monsters, and other such things. Arcanists could identify the energy and it's distinctive clouding from security tapes and knew it to come from the Netherworld. After one arcane scientist and his arcanist colleague posted to a web site attributed to this vigilante and explained some things, Justin was dubbed Netherboy.

Justin did nothing to stop people from talking about him, and even identified himself as Netherboy on several occasions when helping people. Still hopping from town to town and city to city across the midwest and northeast, he left a trail of exposure as something of an urban legend. But when he finally got to Paragon City, after learning of its hero system, he registered for a hero license and took on the official mantle of Netherboy. Learning from other heroes, he was able to expand his control over the dark energy in his fight against evil.

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