Victor Kruger

From Sinanju

Revision as of 23:30, 23 November 2006

Victor Kruger (Original character)

Pre-Deluge history and biography

Victor Kruger was born in 1920 in rural upstate New York. He grew up as part of a sprawling family of seven siblings. He was an adventurous lad, almost fearless, constantly getting scraped and banged up--sometime in fights, but more often just from learning by trial and error which risks were worthwhile and which weren't. His childhood was otherwise fairly unremarkable. He married Sarah Rose Thorne in 1941, when they were both 21 years old. Later that year, after Pearl Harbor dragged the US into World War II, Victor enlisted in the Marines, despite Rose's pleas for him to stay home, stay safe.

Victor spent the next four years on the battlefields of Europe. He got his fill of excitement and then some. He saw more violence, destruction and death than he'd ever imagined he would. When he was demobilized in 1945 he returned to a wife nearly hysterical with relief. Rose badgered him into promising he'd never do anything so risky again--she'd spent the war terrified that he would be killed and leave her a widow. Now that he was home safe, she wanted him to swear that he'd never frighten her that way again. Sobered by his memories of the war, wanting to please his beautiful, sexy, teary-eyed wife, Victor promised.

It was a promise he would regret. The years passed. His memories of the war didn't fade, but he came to realize that he had not permanently lost his taste for adventure. But he'd made a promise to Rose and he meant to keep it. His occasional attempts to revisit their agreement invariably ended in tears and recriminations; Rose was adamant that he live the safe, risk-free, middle-class life they'd agreed upon when they married.

Victor spent the next few decades living a Walter Mitty-style existence. He truly loved Rose and wanted to give her the life she desired; it was just that their life was safe, middle-class--boring. Victor worked at being a successful salesman, raising their four children, fulfilling all the requirements of a conventional family man, but his inner life was his own. He became a voracious reader of genre fiction (pulps, science fiction, fantasy, espionage, anything involving action and excitement); he subscribed to magazines on climbing, diving, skydiving, any action sports he could find. He lived out his thirst for adventure vicariously, reading about men--real and fictional--who lived out the sorts of adventurous lives he was forever denied.

The decades passed. The children grew up and moved out to begin their own lives and families, eventually producing children of their own. VIctor and Rose grew older. Rose's aversion to anything the slightest bit risky only grew stronger as the years passed. Victor's life became, if anything, even more circumscribed by her perpetual fears. Rose seldom left their home any more, and worried incessantly whenever Victor was absent; their circle of friends dwindled as they ceased going out to dinner, to shows, or simply to visit friends except on rare occasions. Victor found his life limited to work, evenings alone with Rose--and his imagination.

Victor continued working long past age sixty-five. He didn't dare retire--that would doom him to spending all his time at home with Rose. He still told himself he loved her, though any passion for her had long ago guttered out. But whether he loved her or not, he was bound by both his marriage vows and his promise. He was seventy-six when Rose died. He grieved--but he was also appalled by a feeling of immense relief. He also discovered bitterness. He was finally free of his vows, free to act on his dreams--and he was too old and feeble to think of taking up the occupations or hobbies he'd daydreamed of for so many years.

Victor spent the last ten years of his life as a retired widower in declining health. He was a bitter, angry man dwelling constantly on a lifetime of missed opportunities and dreaming of his glory days as a young soldier. His children eventually moved him into a nursing home where he could get the help he needed, and where they needn't deal with the man they no longer recognized as a their loving albeit distant father. Victor was simply waiting to die in April of 2006, when the Deluge (as it came to be called) occurred. Energy burned thru him, searing him; Victor felt his heart pounding as if about to burst--and perhaps it did, for he lost consciousness.

Post-Deluge events

Victor woke in a cold, dark space with a stiff, cold sheet covering him. He tried to sit up, bashing his head on a very low ceiling. When shouting for help accomplished nothing, Victor panicked and began kicking and punching at the walls of the tiny space he occupied, smashing open a door and scrambling out. He looked around and recognized the place as a morgue. He was naked, too--and he didn't recognize the body he saw when he looked down, or in the first mirror he could find. He was...he was young again! He was the athletic teenager that he remembered from his days in his parents' farmhouse, not the withered old wreck he had become.

Victor didn't know how this had happened and he didn't care. He laughed, giddy with excitement and delight. He was young again! Young, strong, virile, and free. With no marriage vows and no obligations to anyone else, he was free at last to be the man he'd always wished he could be! He fled the morgue--and the hospital--as quickly as he could manage. He had a lifetime of missed experiences to make up for. Once out on the streets and paying attention to the world again in a way he hadn't been in many years, he discovered just how much chaos had been unleashed on the New York area.

Flushed with excitement, he threw himself into rescuing people who needed help or fighting off predators, including some of the other recently changed (or arrived) mutants. Or aliens. Or whatever the hell they were. In the midst of chaos and horror, Victor was ecstatic--he felt useful again, he had purpose, and he enjoyed the challenges.

It didn't take Victor long to discover that he wasn't merely young again. He was incredibly strong, could endure phenomenal amounts of punishment—and he could fly. It was a dream come true and he quickly decided on his new career. He would become a superhero! Victor spent the next week living the superhero lifestyle--with plenty of drinking, brawling, and carousing thrown in. He was a man on a mission, with a lifetime of missed opportunities to make up for.

By then, however, his dream had clearly become a nightmare. Fate's Handmaiden was decimating the population and there was nothing Victor could do about it. He tried, working with the authorities for as long as there was any real organization left, then on his own. But nothing he did seemed to matter; nothing anyone did seemed to matter. He lost track of the people he saved from violence or accidents only to see them succumb to the plague.

Within days New York City was no more. Hovering over a silent, dead city, unable to find another living soul anywhere he looked, Victor gave up. The world as he knew it has come to a horrible end; everyone he ever knew—everyone he ever knew of--was dead. It could easily be the end of the human race even if there are survivors scattered around the world. And yet—that same disaster has given him a second chance at life. Youth and vitality, phenomenal strength, the ability to fly. How can he not revel in that?

New York City was dead. But Victor knew that there were other survivors. There had to be. He determined to find them. Victor took a last look at the city, then turned and flew away. He's spent the last two months searching for other survivors. He's seen a lot of odd sights and even the occasional hint of survivors—but hasn't laid eyes on another living soul in two months.

Boston had burned. Washington D.C. appeared to have been reclaimed by the swamp on which it was built. Pittsburgh was simply gone, leaving only a perfectly hemispherical divot as if it had been taken with God's own ice cream scoop. Victor turned west after that, hoping for better luck in the midwest.

Occasionally, when it all gets to be too much for him, Victor finds a piano. One of the minor side effects of his rejuvenation is the lack of crippling arthritis that took his music. He will play for hours at a time, losing himself in the music, hiding from the growing fear that that there isn't anyone else still alive.

Character trivia and knowledge

Victor's nature

Victor is a deeply conflicted young man. A large part of the problem is that he doesn't just look young. He feels young, in mind as well as body. Habits of thought that served him as an old man in a crowded urban environment seem alien to him now. He can remember being that old man, but he can't feel it any longer.

Victor truly feels like a teenager again, going through a second adolescence. He's learning anew how to cope with the wild mood swings--irrational exuberance alternating with crushing despair, bouts of self-pity, invincible overconfidence, and all the other side effects of being steeped in bubbling hormones in a way he hasn't experienced in seventy years. His judgment is often suspect and in his more rational moments, he's aware of that. But that knowledge often comes only after the fact.

Knowledge of other characters

Victor knows that Ami has telekinetic abilities, though he is as yet unaware of her other mental abilities.

Romantic Relationships (If Applicable)

Victor has begun a relationship with Ami Jackson. It seems to be quite serious despite being so sudden.

Future plans and Goals