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[u]Identity:[/u]
Originally Charles Szasz, now Vic Sage (with alternate identity The Question – also known as “No-face”)

[u]Origin and Backstory:[/u]
1986, a young child, two years of age was found outside of the inner city apartment of the Ditko family with a note pinned to his shirt that announces the child as Charles Szasz. Steve and Denise Ditko, unable to have children of their own, take the child in and do the right thing. They give him a mug of hot chocolate and a blanket and call child protective services.

Child protective services retrieve the boy, where he is then temporarily taken to one of many orphanages within Hub City. Times have been getting increasingly tough in Hub City and this tale is, tragically, not an uncommon one.

Paperwork is filed and filed and misfiled, the wheels of beauracracy spin. Saint Catherine’s Home became Saint Catherine’s Home became Saint Caterina’s, became Saint Callinica and Basilissa. Szasz became Zsasz, and other permutations. The Ditkos attempt to find the boy, but given the runaround by the system and misfiling of paperwork the young boy appears lost in the system.

All the while the young Charles Szasz exists in a hellhole. Molestation and abuse have become rife in these homes which take on both genuine orphans and “wayward” children alike. The paperwork crosses the desk of a withered attorney, the motivation for his role long since beaten out of him Charles Szasz is merely a name on a piece of paper. No attempt is put in to tracking his parentage or any who may have submitted requests to adopt him. Charles Szasz is rubber stamped as a ward of the state.

The young boy learned resilience. If nothing else Saint Catherine’s taught that. Only the tough survive, and Charlie learned that brutality was one of the few things predators respected. But it wasn’t just anger that burned within him. Charlie had an insatiable curiosity and drive to learn, this eagerness drove him to excel in academic pursuits and likely stemmed from the unanswerable question of his parentage. The combination of the two led to numerous attempt to escape; the logic being that life on the streets, completely unprotected against bad people was better than being locked in a building full of them. In 1997 he plotted a major attempt to escape – however his plan was not perfect – a single nun crossed his path, desperate for freedom the boy knocked the sister down with a single punch before jumping the gate.

Charles Szasz survived 4 days on the street before the 14 year old boy was apprehended by police after being caught stealing fruit from a grocers’.

The paperwork for the assault crosses the desk of a withered attorney, the motivation for his role in law long since beaten out of him, Charles Szasz is merely a name on a piece of paper. No attempt is put in to tracking his parentage or any who may have submitted requests to adopt him. Charles Szasz is rubber stamped by a judge as “ward of the state”. 

Neither the judge nor the attorney would remember the name a month from then.

Now with this mark against his name, Charles Szasz has little hope of finding an adopted home. Things get a little better for him at Saint Catherine’s as he ages, combined with the talks of his escape leading to predators to generally seek weaker prey. He concentrates on academia as his way to get out, and receives a letter from HCU’s Law department after entering an extracurricular essay writing competition with a lengthy piece on social justice. He also files to receive his own records, in an effort to trace his own family. This leads to his discovery of the lazy handling of his own case, obvious even to the teenage Szasz, and further fuelling his interest in law.

The next few years went by fast. Charles Szasz completed his high schooling and eventually gained an academic scholarship to study law at Hub City University (having turned down a financial aid scholarship based on principle). He went on to become one of the five fastest people to pass the Bar in HCU history and split his time completing post-grad studies (having grown to be fine friends with Professor Aristotle Rodor, and sharing a firm belief in the importance of continually growing one’s own knowledge base) and fishing for cases at the Public Defenders Office. 

In these early days, Charles took on a case for his friend Rodor as an ex-associate (Dr Arby Twain) attempted to frame him for a crime and steal his patents. With few resources at his disposal Charles acted as his own private investigator looking to dig up evidence to clear Rodor. Dr Twain confronted Szasz and the two fought in Twain’s highrise office. Attempting to kill Szasz, Twain detonated an explosive device which resulted in his own demise as the blast propelled him out the office window, whilst heavily injuring Szasz. Police stormed the building looking for the culprit, but fortunately Rodor had discovered Charles’ intentions and knowing the threat Twain posed, found him first.

Charles Szasz was badly wounded and with his life on the line Rodor made a snap-judgement decision; using a sample of the pseudoderm he kept handy, he patched up his wounds and preserved his identity by using some as a mask. He then carried him from the scene using a service elevator he still had the key for. With questions that Szasz could never have hoped to give a quality answer to, Charles Szasz would owe his life and career to the older man.

Over the next few years his passion and brilliance in the field saw him shine and he was poached by a moderate sized private firm, where his talent quickly bloomed as he rose to become leading partner of the firm Sage, Stevens, Sienkowicz and Associates which became a juggernaut in Hub City.

Unfortunately another side began to shine through in the lawyer now known as Vic Sage... Was this an avenue for the displaced anger of his years of abuse? Or perhaps a psychological need to protect the other side of justice system given physical form to assuage his own guilt?

A criminal defense attorney by day, vigilante seeking justice by night, who fights for the wrong, who fights for the right?

That is the Question...

[u]Character Notes:[/u]
[b]Setting - Hub City[/b]
Hub City is a swirling vortex of corruption that could be condemned any day now. It had an even heavier reliance on the automotive industry than Detroit and when that went belly-up Hub City’s hopes died. Only three types of people remain in Hub City. People who are too poor to be able to afford to leave, people who are too stubborn to leave and the parasites who feed on its rotting carcass.

Vic Sage is two of these things.

Hub City makes Gotham look like a high-end health retreat. Every day crime and corruption grows and more of its infrastructure collapses.

[b]Supporting Characters:[/b]
[i]Aristotle Rodor[/i]
A true renaissance man, after one tour of duty Rodor left the US Military (where he was a trained field medic) to work in the private sector on his own innovations. It was there that he created pseudoderm. Designed to be an alternative to bandages and stitches, pseudoderm was a form-fitting material that could seal open wounds. After some legal difficulty regarding the rights of the creation with one Arby Twain, Rodor stepped away from his own company and withdrew into finding personal betterment elsewhere. Rodor chose education, he worked towards several doctorates and decided the best way to positively impact the world was to instil ethics and education to the following generation. His credentials were more than enough to land him a position at Hub City University, where he would eventually be destined to teach philosophy and ethics to a young prodigy Charles Szasz as he sought his law degree.

[i]Myra Fermin[/i]
Mayor elect. The woman with the least enviable position in Hub City. Holding the reins of the runaway carriage of a city that’s clearly headed for doom. Previous leaders have scavenged the city, embezzling and looting public coffers and making her job difficult to nigh impossible. Vic Sage took quickly cleared her of allegations, the result of a smear campaign leading up the the election, however the mayor sees him as part of the cause of the downfall of the city. Their relationship is rocky at best.

[i]Izzy O’Toole[/i]
Detective in the Hub City police force. Rocky alliance with Sage’s Question/No-Face identity, loathes Vic Sage the lawyer.

[u]Powers and Abilities:[/u]
No change from the original version, except his knowledge in the field of journalism is replaced by law. Vic dons a pseudoderm mask, held on by an adhesive spray (both creations of Aristotle Rodor) that also alters the colours of his hair and clothes when seeking justice as his alter ego.

Has great powers of deductive, abductive and inductive reasoning, which aid in creating alternate theories in building cases in criminal defence and also investigating as his enigmatic alter ego. Moves “remarkably well, for a well-dressed creep” as said by criminals who have met with the nocturnal No-face. Training by the finest martial artist in the DC Universe combined with a brutal streak gained from an early life of abuse has sculpted him into a fighter who is capable of fluid, efficient combat, but also can possess a barbaric streak.

[u]How is this character different:[/u]
Putting him in the field of law seemed like a natural move to me, with his natural inclination towards “posing the right question”.

I like the aspect that he provides the criminal defence that he politically believes everyone is entitled to by day, whilst operating for the opposite side of the justice system by night. The two sides both often representing the best and worst of a Hub City that is circling the drain, as well as the battle for his own soul.

I think there’s a lot there.

[u]What is your goal with this character:[/u]
To establish a complex version of this Vic Sage and Hub City, before hopefully being able to expand and interject him onto the greater Ultimate DC Universe.

[u]Sample post:[/u]

I’ve got to be honest, I love this more than a little.

[b]“Ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to resolve a matter of grave injustice.”[/b]

Opening statements. Always a lot more leeway, even beyond the rules of the court which allow for a little more rhetoric and dramatic style in these moments, the prosecution will generally sit back because except in extreme cases they don’t like to be seen as bullying the defense.

[b]“We will hear today how one man’s rights were infringed upon.”[/b]

Just me, a stage to speak and twelve jurors aching to hear our side of the story.

[b]“You’ve already heard the prosecution’s side of the story, and whilst it’s true that my client may engage in questionable acts. He may have a job which you and I don’t approve of...”[/b]

They’ve already sat there listening to the prosecution bash and batter my guy for 4 straight days, throwing expert witnesses and evidence and crap at him whilst hearing nothing from us. I’ll be honest, it made my client more than a little nervous. Hell, twice he threatened me with physical harm (from a technical stand point) until I explained how it will strengthen our case.

[b]“...but the fact that my client is, as the prosecution terms it “a pimp” does not mean that he is not entitled to the same inalienable rights that you and I have. It does not justify a different level of treatment or provide an exemption from due process.”[/b]

The truth is I chose to delay the defence’s opening statement until the defence part of the trial for just this reason. The prosecution had been throwing punches at my client for 4 days now, and with the weekend thrown in the jury had gone 6 days hearing nothing from the defence aside from the occasional objection. Now they were hankering for it, and with my case resting on the notion of bullying and improper arrest from the HCPD the prosecution now had to be wary of their decisions to object, to avoid sending a message that they were trying to bully my client even in trial. He’d held up fairly well in court, although he was clearly coming apart behind closed doors.

[b]“In the next few days you will discover how my client was arrested WITHOUT being read his Miranda rights and was held in an unconstitutional fashion. These rights are ours as Americans, and it can be no less just to convict on these grounds than it would be to find anyone hear guilty of speeding without providing evidence of a reading. These rights exist to protect us all as citizens. Not merely those who hold an occupation that we approve of.”[/b]

I look across the 12 sets of eyes in the box, none flinching, all eagerly absorbed in everything I have to say and again I have to admit I love this. Pride. One of those things that can be seen as both sin and virtue, depending who you ask. My friend, Tot would probably say both. He’d probably quote his namesake and note that Aristotle referred to pride as “crown of the virtues”, before dropping the obvious reference to its place in the seven deadly sins. Lives in both worlds. Can’t say I don’t know how that feels...

[b]“You’ll get an understanding of how the police didn’t feel it needed to inform my client of his Miranda rights. Following which, my client was held an interminable period of time in a cynical fashion whilst the police attempted to extract information to create a charge.”[/b]

Prosecution got my witness list as I’m expected to hand over in discovery. There’s a lot riding on them not identifying the pivotal witnesses and leaning on them. And unlike our firm they have the full power of the Hub City Police Department to try and do just that. That’s the problem with this city, sure, I often find myself defending criminals – as is their constitutional right – but in this city, there’s as many crooks in a uniform as there are out. In this system it’s a stacked deck, designed to draw convictions and not release the wrongly accused it’s why good lawyers like myself earn so much.

[b]“No statement drawn from my client in such a fashion can be admissible in court. Meaning the evidence against Mr Weeks is flimsy at best, and possibly artificial at wo--”[/b]

[i]“Objection!”[/i]

[u]“Opening statements, Mr Golding, I’m going to allow it. Go on Mr Sage.”[/u]

I struggle to keep the smile from my face. The jury saw exactly what I wanted. The prosecution attempting to silence the defence and getting slapped down by the judge.

[b]“--possibly artificial at worst.”[/b]

Here in lies the game. Knock the evidence out of the box. Whilst I believe it to be true that the game is stacked towards the prosecution, doesn’t mean a smart player can’t win. I still have one thing going for my side above all else. The prosecution must prove its case with admissible evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Those beautiful three words. “A reasonable doubt.”

As always, it’s my job to preserve the question...