Vendetta CoH
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(4/21/04 1:27 am)
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The Origin of Vendetta
Gavin McCain was born February 7th, 1983 and is the son of Connor and Mary McCain, a semi-well-to-do family in northern Scotland in the city of Kirkwall. Both Mary and Connor were from staunch Catholic families dating back as far as the arrival of the Church in Britain. Mary Scott was a direct descendant of the Scoti clan that first inhabited Scotland from Ireland. The McCain’s moved from Ireland to Aberdeen, Scotland in 1882. Mary and Connor met at University and were married June 28th, 1979. Gavin was the second of three boys.
The first of the McCain tragedies came when Gavin was just 2 years old. Mary was to give birth to their first girl but Ginny McCain died in childbirth due to complications. The death of the girl was very hard on the family and it wasn’t until 8 years later that the McCain’s tried to have another child.
The elder of the three boys, Finley McCain, was born May 3rd, 1980 and was a budding athlete. He excelled at football (soccer) and was an All-Star Striker each year for his Youth League and College (High School) teams. Finley was 16 in 1996, three years after Ian, the youngest and final child, was born. On October 12th, 1996, Finley was driving home from a game with his best friend, Amish O’Conner when a drunk driver careened into his lane into a head-on collision. Finley died instantly and Amish died 14 hours later in the hospital.
Mary McCain fell into a deep depression over the loss of her second child. Mary worked as a realtor and made excellent commissions due to her exceptional personality and outstanding reputation within the community. But her depression overtook her and over the next few years, her sales declined steadily as she never seemed to be able to recover from the loss of Finley. She withdrew from her friends and quit going to church.
Connor McCain, a Major in the British armed forces, was killed in an accident December 31st, 1999. A young soldier and his friends had been drinking despite being on duty and were fooling around with a high-tech guidance system that they had not been cleared to work on (to say nothing of being drunk). They caused a feedback loop and it caught fire. Connor pushed the boys aside and separated the system from the adjacent equipment, avoiding a major disaster and saving several dozen lives. Unfortunately, Connor was not so lucky and was caught in the chest by a piece of steel from a minor explosion from the original machine. Two of the young soldier were Court marshaled while the rest were dishonorably discharged. Connor was awarded Her Majesty’s highest Medal of Honor and Knighted. Gavin was 16.
Gavin, like his brother was an incredible athlete, except his skills were in gymnastics and acrobatics. He excelled in several areas in school: Science, Math, and History. He was extremely personable, which he got from his mother, and was well liked.
Tragedy further struck the family when Mary sunk even further into her depression to the point of becoming mentally unstable. Over the next year, Mary developed many psychoses and became unfit to continue caring for her children. She was taken to St. Lucian’s Hospital for Mental and Emotional Wellness.
In the last months before Mary was institutionalized and just before Gavin turned 18, he had taken his young brother (just 8 years old) to the sea and were climbing around on the cliffs. They had often gone to the ocean cliffs to escape their mother’s tirades when she got particularly bad, and especially when she started drinking. Ian found a cave and before Gavin could stop him, went in. Gavin quickly followed fearing for his young brother’s life. Ian had gone back as far as the light from outside could go and seemed strangely quiet when Gavin had gotten to him. Ahead, in the dark was something that glimmered. Gavin and Ian crept steadily forward until they found a strange metal handle hidden into a recess on the wall that the sunlight had hit just right because a moment later, it seemed to vanish in the darkness as the sun slowly lowered in the west.
But Gavin turned the handle and to his astonishment, the wall slid open and inside lay a large cavern with finished stone walls and floors. Many decorations and sculptures lay around, covered in centuries of dust. It amazed Gavin as the many sculptures and decorations seemed crude as if created by a very under-developed culture. Yet, the polish of most of the stonework made him believe that a very advanced culture with excellent tools had made the rest. But the most amazing discovery was a large, metallic chest with a strange looking locking mechanism surrounded by strange runes or an unknown glyph styled lettering.
Gavin came back to the hidden cavern several times and became increasingly convinced that the cavern was created by some kind of extremely advanced life, possibly aliens and a primitive and barbaric culture had worshiped them, using the cavern as a temple. Gavin kept the chest hidden but studied the locking mechanism and lettering often, hoping that he would someday be able to get it open.
A little over a month later, just after Gavin’s 18th birthday, Mary McCain was arrested for attempting to attack the local military base that Connor had been stationed at. She was said to be screaming that they were holding Connor hostage and that she would do anything to get him free. She had caused a minor injury to one of the soldiers and was first taken to jail. She was moved to St. Lucian’s Hospital for Mental and Emotional Wellness when she was declared insane at her trial.
Having recently just turned 18, Gavin was given control of the family assets. The British army took care of the medical bills for Mary McCain leaving a reasonable estate to Gavin, though, it was significantly less than it had been when his mother had been a successful realtor.
Gavin had been accepted into three major universities in England but the pressure and well meant sympathy of everyone around him made Gavin change his mind at the last minute and he sold the house, took legal custody of his younger brother and moved to the United States to go to a small University where he had also been accepted.
Both of the McCain boys enjoyed the move and the chance to get a “fresh” start. Ian had been having a lot of troubles at school prior to their move and seemed to be much happier and do much better in the American school.
In August, it hit Gavin like a lightning bolt. He opened the chest.
It seemed like such a simple puzzle now that it was open though it had taken him the better part of the last 8 months to solve it. Inside were wonders that he had never dreamed of. He had no doubt now that the chest and the items inside were nothing less than alien in origin. Like the chest, each item seemed to be “protected” by various puzzles. Gavin reasoned, quite correctly, that the puzzles were in place to try to ensure that only a being sufficiently capable of understanding the specific device could use it so that they would not accidentally destroy themselves or others.
Gavin became obsessed with trying to solve the riddles of the new devices that he had found. He quickly applied to dozens of technology and science institutes. He wanted to learn as much as he possibly could in hopes that it would be enough to grant him the insight needed to operate the devices.
Gavin transferred to a new Paragon Institute of Technology the next year and his grades suffered as they had his first year. While Gavin was more than smart enough for the classes he was taking and learning a great deal, he was not doing homework and instead trying to unravel the mysteries of the devices that he had. In his second year of school, Gavin began fearing that he would be expelled and decided to “discover” the cave that he and his brother had found back home. He claimed that his grades had been suffering because of secrete research he was doing (which was true) and that he had now finally unraveled the mystery. He would not release the “mystery” he had been working on but upon opening the hidden cavern (which he had stripped of any of the alien technology) he was hailed as a genius of archeology and had a degree of acclaim within the field. Gavin fed on the acclaim and because of his “research” (and not that he had found it accidentally) had an open door at nearly every university in the United States and Great Britain.
By this time, he had a degree of acclaim but had not made much money. He turned the research of the cavern over to others as he had no interest or profit in it. Now he had leeway at school again and went right back to his old routine. Only this time, he was forgiven for his for his low grades because of the expectations for what he might discover next. And that discovery was soon to come as he began to understand some of the alien technology that he had found. With money running low, Gavin devised some uses for some of the technology and released one as an invention.
With his first “invention” Gavin started a business. He was rich and now was considered a genius in two fields and he hadn’t even turned 21 yet. Gavin had shown great intelligence and cunning in figuring out some of the technology but now had another secret to hide. Only this time, his secret was bigger. If people found out that he hadn’t really invented the technologies his company was releasing two things could happen. 1) His reputation would crumble and his company would suffer terribly. 2) The US government would most likely confiscate the alien technology.
Gavin enjoyed the high life and the attentions of beautiful women. His money, his intellect, his charming personality and his piercing blue eyes gained him much popularity with the media and in High Society. Early last year he married a beautiful, young Supermodel named Lana LeClaire. Gavin’s business, his “discoveries” and his wife contributed to him becoming an international figure.
Everything seemed to be going wonderfully. But the McCain tragedies were not finished. Only six months into his marriage, a stalker, obsessed with his wife, broke into their house and held them at gunpoint. Though the security had alerted police, the stalker tormented them for nearly half an hour. He raged at them in his delusion, claiming that LeClaire and he were some kind of item and that she had betrayed him. As the police arrived on the scene, the criminal hit Gavin over the head with a small sculpture, knocking him to the ground. Gavin was barely conscious as the man attempted to rape his wife. She fought him and bit him on the neck. He cried out and pulled a knife and slit her throat while Gavin watched helplessly. Then the criminal put the gun into his mouth and blew his brains out.
Watching his wife get killed before his eyes combined with all of the tragedy of his family pushed Gavin over the edge. His dreams were haunted constantly with visions of his family getting viciously killed in horrible ways, reliving what really happened and seeing similar things happening to his younger brother drove him frantic. His business slipped as he regressed into a state of paranoia and spent great sums of money to ensure that Ian would be safe, even hiring personal bodyguards for the boy. These measures drove a wedge between the two but Gavin did not care; his young brother had to be protected.
Further, the nightmares kept Gavin from sleeping. He did anything he could to keep himself from sleeping and reliving the horrors in his dreams. Gavin was paranoid and could not let people into his life and pushed everyone away, fearing commitment of any kind and the trauma that could happen to anyone he cared about.
Gavin spent day and night working on the alien technology, anything to keep his mind off of the reality of his life. He became obsessed with the news and the constant barrage of crimes that sick and twisted people kept doing to other, innocent people… like his wife.
As he delved deeper and deeper into the alien gear he began to notice elements that could be combined to create an amazing array of abilities that if placed in the right hands, could make an incredible weapon. Could that weapon be used to help save the innocent? Could that weapon make a difference?
On a sleepless night in the middle of April, just 2 months after turning 21, Gavin McCain made the decision to use the alien technology to bring crime to criminals and put them through what they put their victims through. He knew he had to do this in secret because he would commit crimes that could possibly make him as wanted by the law enforcement as the criminals he would be hunting. He could not let his hunt get in the way of his business. He needed the money to ensure the safety of Ian.
In the fourth week of April, Gavin McCain donned a suit designed in secret by him utilizing equipment of alien origin and as less than a shadow, gunned down a large gang in an abandoned warehouse as they planned various “hits” for the next week and Vendetta was born. After several such attacks, the police issued an arrest warrant for the vigilante, though many in the local law enforcement are secretly not too worried about actually catching the vigilante as long as his strikes continue on criminals they have not been able to get yet.
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