The Prodigy

The Prodigy was a skilled swordsman and hand-to-hand fighter who fought for the revenge of his dead mentors and foster fathers, The Gauntlet and The Swordsman, both members of a guild he was in. Utilizing a sword, a fist, and an iron gauntlet, he fought for justice.  His father was killed when he was fifteen years old while working at the docks and his mother was killed during the North Coast Swarm, The only thing he carries of his parents is his father's blue tunic and his mother's red dress, both torn into strips and made into a flowing bandanna. He appears to be a hero to all who know him - he is courageous, strong, and knows right from wrong. But sacrifice was something new to him, and he had his heart tested in many different ways. He is a fighter at heart and a strong and noble one at that, and while he wishes to be left in peace, he will not be able to sit down comfortably with knowing his life's mission is complete. 
== Biography ==
=== Early Life ===
The Prodigy was born in North Coast in 1983. His parents named him Shaun - he never kept that name - but his schoolmates called him Leonine, due to the fact he was as agile as a cat. His father was a naval soldier who came from the Middle-East and his mother was a middle-class store-owner. The Prodigy/Shaun played at the docks through most of his life when he wasn't at school and honed his acrobatic skills. When he was fifteen years old, The Prodigy was helping his father at the docks, his father slipped and fell to his death. The Prodigy's mother was full of grief and did not allow young Shaun to play at the docks anymore. With this strict rule that barred him from his personal playground, he left home and ran away to Arch Town in the central plains.
=== Life as a Soldier ===
The Prodigy stayed at Border Inn while he was in Arch Town. He hadn't planned to stay there for very long, but the war with the south had caused the roads to be blocked. He had no choice but to stay at Border Inn. During his stay, he made a small fortune being a bounty hunter for escaped war prisoners. He bought a small apartment up in the North District. He later signed up as a soldier to help the cause against the southern cities. He wasn't the greatest sharpshooter with a rifle - he had preferred to use his deadly fists or his knife - but he did not falter on the field. His field captain, seeing how The Prodigy was greater with melee, gave him an old sword lying around and took him to a duel. The decision was made - he could fight with a sword on the field.
=== Joining The Guardians ===
The Prodigy resigned from the Arch Town Militia eleven months after he joined. At the local tavern, he met a mysterious man named The Swordsman, a local town defender. The Swordsman spotted potential within this young man and bought him a couple of drinks. The Swordsman led the drunk into an alley and challenged him to a duel, a challenge which The Prodigy could not refuse. After being humiliated in the duel, The Swordsman, seeing the power this young man held, invited The Prodigy into the guild known as The Guardians. Accepting, The Prodigy left with the Swordsman to the guild's headquarters underneath Arch Town.
The Prodigy earned his name using the old naming technique that The Behemoth used for all members of The Guardians. The Behemoth got his name because of his bulk and strength, The Gauntlet got his name because of his hand-to-hand melee skills, The Swordsman got his name because he was skilled at swordplay, and The Assassin got his name because he was more of a stealthy person. The Prodigy was efficient at The Gauntlet's hand-to-hand style, The Swordsman's swordplay, and The Assassin's acrobatics. Therefore, he was named, 'The Prodigy'.
=== The North Coast Swarm ===
The Prodigy returned home to North Coast in 1999. Upon his arrival, there was a military blockade around the town limits. The Prodigy asked what had happened. A soldier told him that some crazy cannibals had started attacking people inside the town. The Prodigy rushed past the soldier, jumped the barricade, and took out his sword. Inspecting the area, a cannibal caught him unawares and ambushed him. The Prodigy's reflexes were fast, and he cleaved the attacker's head. Upon inspection, the attacker appeared to already be dead before the Prodigy beheaded it. The glassy eyes, the torn flesh, nauseating stench, all characteristics of the stereotypical necromancer's favorite - The Zombie.
The Prodigy rushed to his former home only to find his mother dead. But not from a zombie. She had no sign that she had been bitten, but rather she appeared to have died from a gunshot. And her corpse did not have any characteristic that it had been infected. Could someone have mistaken her for a zombie, or had a paranoid and insane person shot her? The Prodigy ran upstairs to his former bedroom and quickly packed some supplies. He entered his parents' bedroom, and for symbolic purposes, he took his father's naval tunic and mother's dress. After that, he rushed out and stumbled upon Nik Atrius, another survivor. The Prodigy ignored the man, focusing on his escape, and jumped over the barricade once again, fleeing the grounds.
=== Years of Work ===
The Prodigy was tasked by The Gauntlet on many missions. One included having to track down five mass-murderers who had escaped from Chestershire in the west. For these tasks, The Prodigy had gotten some equipment. He recieved a studded protective vest, an iron gauntlet that The Gauntlet used to use, a sword which The Swordsman used to kill his first enemy, an assassin's blade from The Assassin, and The Behemoth's handgun. The Prodigy did not use the handgun as frequently as the other items, but he was not a bad sharpshooter. Four years of this work often made him want to quit, but he was not a quitter.
Through this work, he honed his skills even better and became a truly formidable force on the battleground.
=== The Rangers ===
However, a year after The Prodigy started his work, The Gauntlet told him to stop. The Gauntlet told him that a guild called The Rangers had been founded in Arch Town. He said that they didn't know who they were and their purposes, but they did not sound, for some reason, like the right type of people. The founder, Davis Erwin, was a good-natured man, but his son, Maxis Erwin was a mischievous little trouble making brat, by The Behemoth's words. Soon after they had been founded, Davis died and Maxis took over. Then strange things started to happen.
Murders, beatings, assaults, robberies, kidnappings, bar fights, drunk driving, and other crimes, grew accumulated in the quiet little town of Arch Town. While these things are kind of common in towns, Arch Town was peaceful and had a strong crime watch and criminal justice system. And all these things happened right after Maxis Erwin took over as leader of The Rangers. However, The Guardians worked hard with the local police to keep Arch Town in order, and the crime rate slowed down back to normal.
One day in 2003, The Prodigy went to visit The Gauntlet at his house. When he knocked on the door, there was no response. He waited five minutes for The Gauntlet to answer, but no one answered the door. The Prodigy knew he was at home because his lights were on and the torch signal to let the Guardians know he was home was lit. The Prodigy climbed up a nearby tree to see if he was in his bedroom and nearly fell off when he saw what had happened - The Gauntlet lying face-down in a pool of blood, with multiple gunshot wounds in his chest. The Prodigy quickly called the police and the rest of The Guardians.
The Prodigy examined the nearby handgun used to kill The Gauntlet for fingerprints, and it matched Maxis Erwin's. However, The Prodigy decided that he would not call the police and tell them that, because if he did, the public information would be released and The Rangers would try to kill him and The Guardians.
=== Revenge ===
After The Gauntlet had been murdered, The Prodigy swore revenge on Maxis Erwin, and so did The Swordsman, who wanted vengeance for his foster brother's death. Erwin had fled from Arch Town, but the duo tracked him down to Chestershire. The Rangers had taken over the community like a gang. When the duo arrived in Chestershire, a firefight broke out in the streets. It appeared that Erwin had expected the duo's arrival. The Swordsman told The Prodigy to find Erwin, who had fled, leaving his gang to deal with the two. The Swordsman used his agility and perception to deflect and dodge the bullets, killing many of the guild's members, while The Prodigy used his incredible acrobatic skills to chase after Erwin. 
The Prodigy found Erwin up on top of a building pointing a handgun at him. Erwin fired a shot, but then The Swordsman jumped into the way of the bullet, taking the shot right in his heart, and the force of the bullet threw him over the building. The Prodigy grabbed his handgun and fired back at Erwin, crippling his leg. The police arrived and sent Erwin and The Swordsman to the hospital, with arrest warrants to imprison Erwin later. Even though Erwin had been imprisoned, The Prodigy felt like his revenge was incomplete.
=== The Crusade Begins ===
A few days later after Maxis had been imprisoned, The Rangers broke him out of prison and fled. They erased their marks in a permanent sense - unleashing Zombies upon poor Chestershire. The Prodigy was enraged and decided to take this into his own hands. He tracked him down as best as he could, but he did not get very far. An assassin by the name of Aaron Daniels had been unwittingly sent by The Rangers to put down The Prodigy. Aaron had been told by a military official, who was actually one of Maxis's goons, that The Prodigy was an escaped criminal who was extremely dangerous to capture, and was asked to silence. The Prodigy managed to dodge the lethal attack, identifying Aaron as one misled by The Rangers. The Prodigy told Aaron the truth, and demanded the whereabouts of the gang. Apparently, they went to Terrence Fields to get their hands on a chemical weapon known only as Salvation. When The Prodigy tried to attack Maxis directly, he was shot repeatedly and almost killed if it hadn't been for his Guardian brothers who found him. And so The Prodigy devised a plan - break The Chain.
=== The Chain ===
To proceed with his plan, The Prodigy would have to be extremely stealthy and precise with his kills. He disguised himself as a traveler and often spied on his targets before making the move when they were alone. One by one, each kill dealt a weakening blow to Erwin and his metaphorical chain. Some were harder than the rest, while others were way too easy. The police had either turned a blind eye to The Prodigy's kills or didn't notice at all, making his kills slightly easy. The Guardians had many times tried to find The Prodigy and console him or even help him, but he refused to acknowledge them. This was personal. Soon the hitlist was complete, and the chain was broken. Maxis, fearing for his life, sent a hidden guard - a great brute named Rex Titan - to see the Prodigy off and ran to the only safe haven he knew - the ruins of North Coast.
=== A Lapse in the Plan ===
Rex Titan was able to track the Prodigy down. The hulking and intelligent killing machine was too much for even the Prodigy's full strength, and the young man was knocked out and put into a coma. He did not wake for five years. After the Prodigy had been taken care of, so to speak, Maxis feared that the authorities would find him and ran off the island and back onto the mainland and did not come back for seven years. During that duration, he spoke with great chemists, doctors, scientists, and alchemists to find a true virus that could turn the user into an unstoppable killing machine. He had to go through testings, projects, surveillance, and administered medicines to make sure his system was ready for the virus. In 2009, the Prodigy awoke with his memory and skill, barely a scratch. He had to track down Maxis again, training past his potential and into raw skill. In 2011, Maxis was waiting for him in the ruins of North Coast.
=== Final Conflict ===
After tracking Maxis down at North Coast, The Prodigy slaughtered the small group of mercenaries Maxis had hired. But before he could kill Maxis, he saw that Maxis was holding something - a small little vial filled with blue liquid. "You won't get past the Salvation!!" Maxis had yelled before injecting himself with the vial. As the liquid drained into his blood, Maxis's muscles rippled and bulged. His face was strained and his veins turned black. Suddenly, his face's flesh exploded, revealing a demonic bullet-shaped skull with slitted red eyes, his skin burned away, revealing his rippling chemical muscles, his hands turned into claws, and barely any part of him resembled human at all. The Prodigy drew The Behemoth's handgun and shot the Maxis-creature in the face and eyes. Despite the weakness of the handgun, it did moderate damage, causing the monster to stagger back. After a long and perilous fight involving many combinations of swordplay, shooting, clawing and punching, the creature fell, dying in a pool of its chemical blood. The Prodigy had finished his lifelong quest at the age of 28, in 2011. 
=== Aftermath ===
After The Prodigy was completed his revenge, his felt weakened. He was young, but the experience he had gained made him feel elderly. He decided to quit The Guardians. and settle down in a small little town called Waughston.  In his journal's last entry, he described it as 'small, quiet, beautiful, and serene'. He acted as a town defender and earned a living being a bounty hunter. For once, he felt truly at peace with a comfortable life, for his life's mission was completed and he had gained his reward. No burdens weighed him down, no guilt, no vengeance, nothing. This noble soul had gotten what he truly deserved.
== Appearance ==
The Prodigy is a fit young man with a good-natured twinkle in his light blue eyes. He is moderately tall, tan, and muscled. He wears a brown vest, tan fatigues, and brown hiking sandals, giving him the look of an adventurer. His hair is black and is spiked, but kind of flops from the gaps in his bandanna. He usually wraps his bandanna around his mouth, giving him a more mysterious look and so people will not recognize him as easily.
== Personality ==
The Prodigy is good-natured and witty. He loves to make people laugh and hear himself laugh. He has a booming voice and chooses his words carefully but quickly. He prefers to use his silver tongue rather than the sharp end of his sword first if he can. He is incredibly agile and if the situation allows it, he would rather sneak around his enemies than attack them straightforward. Though he is good in combat, he doesn't like the idea of killing people, and avoids combat whenever he can. But this does not mean is he is timid. He will stand up for himself and be more than aggressive. 
== Behind the Scenes ==
The Prodigy is based off of the well-known game character, The Prince, the main character of the critically-acclaimed Prince of Persia (2008). This is most noticeable due to the fact that The Prodigy is a swordsman and wields a gauntlet, much like The Prince, is slightly middle-eastern, wears a red and blue bandanna, wields a spiked gauntlet, and his picture is directly from a Prince of Persia (2008) trailer. The Prodigy's past reflects The Prince's past in similar ways as well, and Prodigy was rumoured to be Prince of Persia (2008)'s original title. The strong similarities were caused by the fact that Leon had been playing Prince of Persia during the time that he started ConHorror. He loved the game so much that he in fact made The Prodigy as a homage to the game.
Category:Characters