The Contenders

In 1982, the place for scrappers, tough guys, and every general sort of ne’er do well who called the Fens home was a seedy, completely unappealing dive named Schenck’s. It might have been a reputable alehouse in previous generations, but by the time the ’80s rolled around it was a festering cesspool of the worst sort. The beer was cheap, if watered down, but the real draw for the neighborhood thugs was the backroom entertainment. Those who knew the men who went to the weekly fights in the back hoped they would not return; it was not at all uncommon for crippling injuries or even deaths to result from such fights. The winners were the worst, because they came home sore, drunker than usual, and with adrenaline in their system. No one cared about the men who fought at Schenck’s.
Perhaps that was why The Labyrinth chose them for test subjects.
It was a surprisingly low-profile operation. The Friday night fight was in full effect when Labyrinth agents gassed the entire structure. The eighteen men participating in the back were taken and everyone else was left. There was hardly a person in the building to whom blackouts and memory loss weren’t familiar conditions, so no one thought much of it, to be honest. The families and “friends” of the men taken certainly didn’t miss them.
Of the eighteen subjects removed from Schenck’s, only six survived The DNAscent Process. The six survivors were allowed to escape after having been thoroughly studied, although they believed that they fought their way free (a favorite tactic employed by the DNAscent technicians and administrators). The men, each altered in such a way that returning to their previous, miserable existences was both impossible and undesirable, decided to go into business for themselves. The Contenders were born, counting among their number Bear-Knuckle, Fly-Boy, Heavyweight, Sucker Punch, TKO, and Undercard.
The Contenders spent most of the ’80s and a good portion of the ’90s attempting all manner of primitive criminal enterprises. On their own, they weren’t smart enough for anything other than a bank job or an extortion racket, but occasionally they found themselves in the employ of other, more sophisticated criminal organizations. Over the course of their careers, they have worked for the Oliverti family, The Foundry, the Labyrinth (the irony was completely lost on them), and even Boss Moxie’s cartoon Mob on one occasion (which made the pages of newspapers around the country). Although the Contenders rarely had more than nominal success at any long-term objectives, they did develop a reputation as useful henchmen because of their combat abilities, their ability to keep their mouths shut, and their general lack of ambition; it was difficult to plot against their bosses when they only had a marginal understanding of what the plan was, after all.
By the late 1990s, however, the Contenders were not faring well. Fly-Boy and Heavyweight had just gotten out of prison after a three-year stint for grand larceny. Sucker Punch had been killed a few years prior after a heated disagreement with Bear-Knuckle in a seedy waterfront dive. Undercard went to prison with Fly-Boy and Heavyweight and was killed on the inside for his involvement in the death of a Mob boss’s son some years before. Bear-Knuckle and TKO, who had remained free, had been unable to find work for more than six months. Given that none of the Contenders had ever really grasped the notion of saving for a rainy day, things were looking bleak all around. When August Roman approached them about joining his new underground fighting circuit, they were interested.
The Circuit Maximus was an outgrowth of Roman’s previous criminal enterprise, the Circus Maximus. Looking to capitalize on the growth market of underground gambling as well as make the most of his connections within the superhuman criminal community, Roman set up a circuit where superhumans could face off against one another in a no-holds-barred, one-on-one competition while jaded, wealthy onlookers wagered on the outcome. It was ideally suited to the Contenders. All four signed up instantly. The only condition was that they would never be forced to fight against one another unless the two participants agreed to the bout. In a manner fitting men of their nature, they signed their first contracts in blood.
Under different circumstances, the Contenders might not have fared well on the Circuit. There were many other superhumans already signed up who were more powerful and more skilled. At the time, however, they were lean, hungry, and desperate for a chance to make a better life for themselves. They exploded on the scene like a hurricane and began cutting a path through the competition that stunned everyone involved with the Circuit.
Years later, the Contenders remain heavily involved with the Circuit Maximus. They are among the most popular fighters in the organization and each has a loyal fan-base among the long-time followers of the scene. They are all well past their prime and aware of it, even if they refuse to admit it to anyone else. They are regarded as grand marshals in a way and it is rare for a Circuit event of any size not to have at least one of them in attendance to oversee the matches.
Occasionally some young upstart will challenge one of the Contenders. These matches are wildly popular among the gamblers and fans; none of the Contenders have ever declined such a challenge. In the ring, they are brutal and relentless, determined to prove they are still forces to reckon with. What they may lack in strength and speed these days, they make up for in sheer ruthlessness. It works well. More than one arrogant young challenger has been killed in the ring in these matches, but then that sort of thing is perfectly acceptable on the Circuit Maximus.

Structure

BEAR-KNUCKLE

Bear-Knuckle is easily the most violent and ruthless of the Contenders. Among a group of their general temperament, that is quite a statement indeed. Some believe his animalistic tendencies are a result of the same process that altered his body, but those who knew him before DNAscent all agree his temperament has not changed in the least.
Michael Donovan was the survivor who lost the least when the Labyrinth abducted and experimented on the patrons of Schenck’s, all those years ago. He had no family, no job, and almost no chance of survival. He owed money to a local loan shark and had already beaten one man who came to collect the money nearly to death. If he had not been taken by Labyrinth, it is unlikely he would have survived the week. As it was, he saw his transformation as a chance to leave everything behind and start over, making a better life for himself. Unfortunately, Donovan had very little understanding of what a better life was. In the end, he simply used his new talents to escalate the violence that had marked his life up until that point.
Bear-Knuckle is the most violent and least intelligent of the Contenders, but that is not to say that he isn’t cunning. Even before the abduction, he had a knack for reading people and avoiding larger predators. Bear-Knuckle never makes the arrangements for the Contenders to take on new jobs, but he’s always the one who takes care of business if the group’s employers betray them.
Ironically, while the other Contenders have often been angry at Bear-Knuckle for complicating their lives with his violent rages, none of them are particularly concerned that he killed Sucker Punch, one of their number, over a decade ago. The extent of Sucker Punch’s physical changes was significantly greater than either Bear-Knuckle or Fly-Boy; even after ten years of working together, he still made the others uncomfortable. Sucker Punch was also a frequent critic of both the other members and the team’s plans. At the time the fight broke out between the two men, Sucker Punch was engaging in a scathing review of everyone else’s performance over the past year. Matters grew more and more heated until Sucker Punch made the mistake of pushing Bear-Knuckle, a fatal decision almost certainly spurred on by excessive drinking. The fight lasted almost an hour. When it was over, Sucker Punch was dead. The other Contenders almost never speak of the incident these days; if they do, the consensus is that Sucker Punch had it coming.
In the Circuit, Bear-Knuckle is absolutely merciless. Of all the team, he has suffered the least from aging. For the most part, he is every bit the lethal force of nature he was in his youth, only wiser and more experienced. He is challenged the least out of all the Contenders by younger fighters, primarily because they are terrified of him. More fighters have died following a match with Bear-Knuckle than any other fighter in the Circuit’s history. For his part, Bear-Knuckle only wishes he got to fight more often.

FLY-BOY

While Bear-Knuckle is certainly the most frightening of the Contenders in terms of physical appearance, no one can dispute that Fly-Boy has the most disturbing physical changes. He is utterly unrecognizable from the days before to his transformation, a fact made all the more tragic because he is the only one of the Contenders who had a real family life.
Freddy Tarentello was one of the smallest men to frequent Schenck’s, but that never stopped him from joining in the festivities in the backroom. In fact, he was a favorite among a lot of the older patrons, men who couldn’t fight themselves any more but who enjoyed betting on the bouts. Freddy was small but fast, and that made him a hard target for the other fighters to hit. Plus, he could hold his liquor. Despite his small size, he could hit with surprising power. The end result was that Freddy could go toe-to-toe with much larger men and hold his own. He enjoyed the fighting, but more than anything he did it for the money; he had a wife and an infant son he needed to provide for, and his job down at the docks just didn’t pay that much.
After the abduction, Freddy took the longest to recuperate from the DNAscent process, possibly because of the nature of his mutations. He awoke to discover he was in a secure hospital ward with five other men, most of whom looked like something out of the late, late show. Then he saw a mirror. Freddy’s skull had swollen and his hair had come out in patches. His eyes had been replaced with bulging, insect-like multi-faceted eyes. His arms were stick-thin and covered in coarse bristles—and there was something that looked like wings growing from his back.
The discovery drove Freddy over the edge. It was his resulting berserk rage that allowed the Contenders to escape, especially after Freddy regurgitated acid all over the walls and burst through, killing three security guards and two lab assistants in the process.
After their escape, Freddy wasn’t interested in remaining with the group. He attempted to go home—once. When his wife would not stop screaming long enough for him to explain who he was, he left. Freddy Tarentello died that day, for all intents and purposes. Fly-Boy has not answered to his real name since then.
True to his original abilities, Fly-Boy is easily the physically weakest of the Contenders. His abilities and cunning approach to combat, however, more than make up for his deficiencies. He is the only Contender to ever defeat Bear-Knuckle in one-on-one combat, though he has made a point to avoid fighting the much-larger man ever since; he knows not to push his luck.
In the Circuit, Fly-Boy works to humiliate his opponents as much as to defeat them. He knows the younger generation of fighters is vastly superior to him in pretty much every way. Rather than trying to brutalize them like the other Contenders, he ensures he is not challenged by turning his opponents into a laughingstock. More than one challenger has left the Circuit altogether after a crushing and demoralizing defeat by Fly-Boy.

HEAVYWEIGHT

Henry O’Hara was not a brutal or even particularly violent man. He was, however, extremely large, exceptionally strong, and just a little bit slower than the average man on the street. Henry tried to hold down a regular job dozens of times, but most simply had too steep a learning curve. Ultimately, menial labor was all Henry could manage. With an ailing mother to care for, though, he needed more money than his day jobs could provide. When some of his friends at work told him about the fights down at Schenck’s, he was curious. He went down to check it out and was soon roped into fighting. His so-called friends kept most of the money, of course, but Hank had enough to help with his mother’s bills. As far as he was concerned, that was all that was important.
Hank knew something was different the moment he woke up from surviving the DNAscent process. He had never been particularly fast, but now he felt almost overwhelmingly sluggish. It was as if there was some massive weight crushing down on him. What’s more, when he took a sip of water from a cup sitting next to his cot, the table shattered when he put it back, almost like the cup weighed a ton. Over the next few days, while the others were slowly waking up around him, Hank learned he could make other things as heavy as he was, if he wanted. More importantly, he learned how not to do it if he didn’t want to. That didn’t help him to deal with how he looked, however.
Hank had never been a handsome man, not by any stretch of the imagination. After he woke up, however, it was much, much worse. His body looked like it was subjected to massively higher gravity, which in a sense was true. His features were drawn and exaggerated, drooping downward. As TKO put it when he awakened, “it looks like you got melted!” Never having had any luck with women anyway, he’d come to grips with his appearance years before. At the time, this seemed the least of his problems.
The escape from the Labyrinth lab would likely not have been possible without Hank. Many of the others had awakened only recently and were not yet fully recovered. Hank had been awake for days, however, and his abilities made short work of any obstacles in their path. When his slow speed threatened to derail their escape, BearKnuckle used his massive strength to assist Hank, a fact he has never forgotten, even to this day.
Once the escape was over, Hank attempted to go home, but his mother suffered a mild heart attack at the sight of what had happened to her son. Wracked with guilt, Hank left, promising himself he would not return unless he could find a cure for his condition. For that reason more than any other, he joined with the other Contenders in their life of crime. Most of the money Heavyweight has accumulated over the years has been sent to his still living but continually ill mother in hopes she will be able to live in comfort. Unbeknownst to Hank, his mother donates the money to charity, not wanting anything to do with such ill-gotten gains. She wishes only for her son’s return.
Heavyweight takes no pleasure in fighting in the Circuit. He does it because the others assure him it is necessary for the entire team to retain their comfortable level of existence, and because he does not want to let his friends down. Once in the arena, his slow speed makes him an easy target for his opponents, but Heavyweight is virtually immune to harm and usually only needs to connect once to finish a match. To fight with him is to face inevitable defeat, and Hank is a patient man. Those few opponents who have managed to truly make him angry have rarely been in any condition to ever fight again.

TKO

TKO is the only one among the Contenders who has no physical mutations to accompany his powers. As such, he has always been the team’s scout and infiltrator, at least on those few jobs calling for anything other than brute force. Of all the Contenders, TKO is the only one in whom the agents of the Labyrinth show any lingering interest, since telekinesis is among the most versatile and useful abilities commonly displayed by DNAscendants. Unfortunately, the Labyrinth considers TKO only a marginal success; his powers simply are not very broad in scope and are limited largely to displays of brute force much like his teammates. What they do not realize, and indeed what TKO himself does not know, is his power is considerable; its primary limitation is that TKO is not particularly bright or creative, and thus has never worked to expand his abilities. If he did, he would easily be the most powerful of his team and might well become a significant threat to Freedom City. His background, however, makes this sort of thing seem unlikely.
Terry Oliver was not one of the backroom brawlers at Schenck’s on that fateful night. He was there to watch and have a good laugh while downing a lot of watered-down drinks. The sort of men who watched the fights were the sort who didn’t pay a lot of attention to what was going on around them, and Terry had a habit of picking up a few extra dollars here and there, as well as a lot of drinks. It wasn’t that he couldn’t take care of himself; on the contrary, he figured he could handle the fights if he ever had a mind to. It was just that he saw no reason to get banged up if there was another way.
Since their transformation, Terry has remained the group’s quiet, reserved member. He watches rather than taking an active role, joining in the fray only when the team’s is up against the wall and fighting is the only way out. Once he joins the battle, he is every bit as unrelenting as his teammates and can hold his own with any one of them. In the Circuit, he is challenged less often than any of the other Contenders save for Bear-Knuckle, simply because no one knows for certain exactly what his abilities are; TKO has worked hard for years to ensure his powers are something of a mystery. All anyone can say for certain is he is just as dangerous as his teammates and his powers are something more than just superhuman strength.

Type

Illicit, Gang