The Secret History of Wildcard

Wildcard: the name alone strikes terror into the heart of criminals everywhere.
    Steve Jones was a perfectly normal teenager until he and his friends were unknowingly exposed to the exotic radiation of an exploding spacefold warp drive (see The Truth About Split Second for more details on this event). Unaware off the effects this had on him, Jones returned home. It was several months before he discovered what had happened. He and his girlfriend Julie were visiting Harborview for a concert when members of one of the city's uncontrolled street gangs beset them. As they ran, Julie tripped and fell. Unwilling to abandon her, Steve turned and faced the half dozen punks, not expecting to win but perhaps to make enough noise to save her. The battle was over in less than fifteen seconds; the six punks were unconscious at his feet.
    Unsure how he had done that, he roused Julie and got her out of there, his blood still boiling and his temper flaring. When questioned, he attributed the save to Rapidfire, who had just appeared last week in Harborview. Once Julie was safe, Steve ran over what happened: he had single-handedly beaten half a dozen armed men, all older, larger and supposedly stronger than he. While he had been hit once or twice, he felt more alive than he ever had, a feeling that had started during the fight, when one of the punks' knives tuned to powder in Steves hand
    It took him weeks more to get a grip on the strange nature of his powers, but once he had, he knew what to do. He was still angry, and was becoming more so every time he heard about the rampant street crime in Harborview and the surrounding towns. Something had to be done, and he was the one to do it. Hindered by his lack of easy transportation, Steve began sneaking into the city at night and on weekends, cutting a swath of destruction across the gang turf. He adopted his trademark throwing cards early on and claimed the identity of Wildcard. He was quickly hated by the gangs, had a contract on his head from the Mafia, and was wanted for questioning by the police.
    This state of affairs lasted over a year, with Wildcard becoming progressively more violent and deadly, leaving more than one corpse in his wake. Steve was using his bio-energy powers to avoid sleep, to keep active constantly, and that combined with his variant neurology was driving him insane. He was becoming more violent at school, destroying his relationship with Julie, alienating his friends and killing people when safe behind the mask of the wanted vigilante. The police had no proof that he was responsible, and he had never killed an innocent, but the edge was approaching fast and Steve's conscience was asleep at the wheel.
    During the course of this year, the investigator in charge of the Wildcard case was Lt. Kyle Keating, a rough, cynical street cop who sympathized with the vigilante perhaps more than he should. After he finally cornered Wildcard, the pair formed a partnership. Wildcard moved his efforts up the criminal food chain, provided with information by Keating. The Giabaldi Mafia family became even more nervous, since unlike the other vigilantes, Wildcard, true to his name, followed no rules.
    Two things combined to save Wildcard's sanity, if not his soul. First was the revelation of identities amongst the vigilantes who would become Ground Zero—they provided people to rein him in, friends whose opinions mattered, who could block his more violent impulses. Second was Julie, and her unwillingness to let him slide off the edge. He stopped pushing himself so hard, stopped relying on his powers for energy, and brought his mind back into focus.
    Still, Steve refused to cut back on his activities as Wildcard, and something had to give. That thing was school. He graduated from high school with the lowest attendance and grade point average possible to maintain his enrollment. He moved into the city and managed, on the strength of his potential and skill, to get a scholarship at Mansfield College in music, specifically guitar. Julie was already a student there in their psychology program, and he used the college as a home base in his war on the Harborview street crimes. Interspersed with these were activities alongside Ground Zero, specifically Black Flag, with whom he fought Spyder, enforcer for the Giabaldi Mafia, several times.
    When the Polvian invasion occurred, Wildcard trusted the other members of Ground Zero to handle the large problems—he focused on keeping the terrestrial rats in their holes. He was not with the rest of the team on the mission against the Plovian mother ship that cost Black Flag his life. At the close of the invasion, Wildcard had finally won a decisive victory against Spyder. Giabaldi hired the world's greatest contract killer, the man known only as Trevor, to take Wildcard down. Meanwhile Giabaldi and his agency—already under fire from TECH, the street gangs and renewed pressure from the World Crime League—tried to reassert control over a Harborview wounded in the invasion.
    Worse still, Keating was critically wounded by Trevor's first attack, leaving Wildcard without reliable information. Under new pressure, Steve left MC and began playing guitar in local clubs, specifically those clubs fancied by the Giabaldi middlemen. That and a network of contacts throughout the cities underworld allowed Wildcard to counter Giabaldi at every turn. Still, Trevor was getting closer and closer, and things had to come to head.
    That head came, unexpectedly, when the vigilante Concussion set off a bomb in one of the Mafia clubs after hours, eliminating over half of Giabaldi's lieutenants and nearly killing Wildcard, who was eavesdropping. The resultant confusion allowed Wildcard to locate and pilfer one of Giabaldi's information houses while shattering his new alliance with TECH. The day Keating returned to active service, Wildcard dropped the evidence necessary to indite Giabaldi on his desk.
    Rather than be brought in, Giabaldi fled the country, taking shelter with the Brazilian Liberation Front. Wildcard would have caught him then, if Trevor had not attacked again. This final battle between the two left Trevor falling from the top of the Prest Industries building to his certain death, though his body was never found. Calling in Ground Zero, Wildcard led the team to Brazil where they forcibly extradited Giabaldi back to the United States. He stood trial and was eventually sent away for life, his criminal empire shattered.
    Wildcard moved in to mop up, but was distracted by the sudden onset of the Demonwar in New York. He, Sargent Master Stryker, and Grimouir made it into the Coven headquarters, only to discover that the gateway needed to be closed from both sides at ones. Wildcard jumped through, and the portal was closed moments later, with Wildcard on the wrong side. He is presumed dead in the conflict, along with Black Dragon and his teammates Impulse, Orion and Split Second. A statue to them stands in Heroes Square in downtown Harborview, in the plaza constructed from the area destroyed by the Plovian invasion.
    Wildcard's primary variant ability was the power to draw strength from the strong and weak atomic forces of solid objects, replacing them with a peculiar bio-field. This bio-field is unstable and collapses on contact with other bio-auras, replacing the strong and weak forces with bio-energy from the contacted field. In essence, Wildcard draws strength from solids, and then those solids draw strength from others. This additional energy served to vastly increase Wildcard's reaction speed and strength to slightly beyond human maximum. He could use this power on very small objects in contact with other people, so that his gloves or opponent's clothing became a conduit for him to drain his opponent's bio-energy. A side effect of this power rendered the drained objects extremely brittle, so that inorganic impacts, or Wildcard himself, could shatter them with ease.
    Wildcard was also an expert with any thrown weapons, in part because of his variant agility and in part from his extreme training and experience. He had no difficulty aiming thrown attacks at multiple targets, and in one case struck seventeen targets with a volley of quarters. His extreme strength and agility afforded him an eclectic and effective untrained combat style, since he could put much more faith in what would be brushing attacks by others to have a greater effect on his targets.
    Finally, Wildcard had perhaps the most frightening reputation of any Vigilante in history. This is partially due to his violent fighting style, partially due to his past actions, mostly due to his carefully cultivated image—that fear worked for him, and he did everything he could to emphasize it. Criminals worldwide, even in countries he never visited, know of him, and pray that his anger is not directed at them. He is the bogeyman that criminals use to scare their children. His connections to the high profile Ground Zero, contrary to logic, served to enhance that, because of the belief that he could use them as weapons at any time, and then no one is safe.

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