Wildcard

The terror of criminals everywhere, he might be the most feared vigilante in history. Wildcard first appeared with the rest of the crop of new variants in Harborview in 1980. He, like the others, assaulted the gang and organized crime problems in the city, but unlike the others Wildcard was brutally violent and unpredictably methodical. For the first year of his career his kill total is measured somewhere in two digits, and while all were officially filed as accidents or self defense, historians (not to mention the criminal element) have painted a different picture: the only thing that separated him from the gangsters he was hunting was covert police support.
    If Wildcard's statements are to be believed, he was a Harborview teenager whose variance manifested when he and a date were assaulted by a gang on the streets. Outnumbered and unarmed, he managed to disable six armed attackers in seconds. This experience led to the development of his Wildcard identity and his war against the street gangs. His appearances were tracked by the maverick cop Detective Kyle Keating. Keating was tasked with bringing Wildcard and the city's other violent and frightening vigilante, Death, under control or to justice. Keating was a bad choice—he had been chasing the Giabiadi Mafia family for the better part of a decade. Rather than rein in the rouge mask, he and Wildcard became a team, with Keating providing police support and information and Wildcard working outside the law.
    During his first year of operation, Wildcard's actions became increasingly aberrant and violent, to the point of once attacking Rapidfire and Impulse for preventing him from properly sending a message. Recently declassified files indicate that the emergence of Wildcard's strange energy powers caused a temporary mental imbalance. This imbalance was somehow righted in early 1980, just before the incidents against TECH (see entry on Francis Bouie) and Commander Nazi that marked the formation of Ground Zero. His behavior was again under control (although still enough to send civil libertarians into fits) and within the laws crafted to handle variant vigilantes such as himself. Still, the earlier pattern and reputation had been set, and Wildcard never skimped on using or enhancing it to keep his all important reputation. There is no doubt that he enjoyed being feared.
    After Ground Zero's formation he was one of its core members, providing the passion to Split Second's heart. The two made an odd pair, but there was something that bound them together in their activities. They were light and shadow, loved and feared, and friends above all. This strange dichotomy extended to other aspects of his group interactions as well—he was a guitarist and singer on the Ground Zero album and concert tour, and produced some stunningly beautiful and moody ballads, interspersed with the rest of the heavy rock. Like Split Second, Wildcard defies easy explanation.
    Like many other members of Ground Zero, he operated solo as well, continuing his attacks against the Giabaldi family and the street gangs. And like Split Second, he didn't have a rogues gallery per se, because any of his foes would be targeted by the whole of Ground Zero as well. But there is one in specific: Hunter. Hunter (Elijah Trevor) was a world class variant assassin (in both senses of the term—he was a variant who was paid to kill variants). Giabaldi contracted him to assassinate Wildcard, whatever the timetable, whatever the cost. Hunter made no less than 13 attempts in Wildcard's life, and the pair had 5 direct battles from 1982-1986. Their final conflict, atop the Prest towers, led to Hunter falling to his death, although no body was recovered.
    Wildcard was not part of Ground Zero's assault on the Plovian Battle Cruiser; he opted to stay behind and lead the reclamation of Harborview from both the aliens and those attempting to profit from the alien war (read: the Giabaldi Family). This was a violent and dangerous time, with Wildcard on the physical front line with the soldiers rather than in space. It was a position he would repeat in the Daemonwar.
    Wildcard was instrumental in the final phases of the Daemonwar. When the army was falling back against the tide of Daemonic forces flowing from Brooklyn, the nation's variants were fighting to get behind enemy lines and close the beachhead. In the end, it was Wildcard, Sargent Master Stryker and Grimouir who made it to the gateway. Details on what happened after that are sketchy: Stryker wouldn't go into details, and Grimouir was cryptic, then vanished. What is generally understood is that the trio discovered that the gateway could not be closed from this side alone—someone had to close it from either side simultaneously. Wildcard took the charm required from Grimouir and jumped in. Seconds later the gate was closed, and the war was ended for all practical purposes. According to Grimouir, the Daemongrid can never be reopened. Wildcard is trapped there. Forever. Regardless of your feelings concerning his career and methods, you must respect that heroism. A statue of him stands at the center of Harborview's Heroes Square.
    Wildcard's powers are difficult to define. He possessed low-end variant strength and mid-range variant agility. His sense of accuracy was superhuman, and he could throw nearly anything effectively as a weapon. His superhuman physical ability and combat skill made him a difficult target, and he could easily evade automatic weapons fire.
    All of these are secondary to his main power, which was the absorption of energy from the energy lattice that keeps matter solid, replacing it with a temporary energy matrix that held the matter together, but in a very brittle state. That energy would then absorb energy from any bio-auras it contacted, re-stabilizing itself as a standard energy matrix at the expense of the creature touching it. The upshot of this is that Wildcard would touch an object and gain stamina from it. The object itself would be extremely fragile and easily broken until it touched any living thing other than Wildcard. At such time the object would drain stamina from the toucher, reverting to normal. Wildcard had learned to do this to all of an object (maximizing the stamina drain in others) or partially (allowing the combination of stamina drain and impact). This was a very effective and dangerous power.

Want more? See the secret history of Wildcard.

| Top |