Origin Story

I was born George Wilkins the III to a wealthy family, a fortunate son as John Fogerty would say, I never knew want as a child and this isolated me from my fellow man due to my status in society. All of this is different now. Everything has changed. My father was not around the house very often as his business was very important and often called him away from home to the city work for weeks at a time. My mother was very loving but her time was preoccupied with her tennis or horseback riding lessons, more specifically to the handsome instructors she went through. I would not say I am a genius, but I do know that I am smarter than almost all of the children I attended school with back before it happened. I like to think about my life back then and try and remember how it felt to once be innocent. I never can though; it always slips away from me just as I seem to be getting to it. When I was twelve my parents were killed during a fatal shootout involving the New York Police Department and a gang of bank robbers. I saw them get gunned down in front of me, just another few innocent bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hate that we as a society must label everything. We do it to hide from our true feelings and emotions. I rarely talk about this because in my heart I am terrified of it still to the day. My parents weren’t great parents but they were still mine. They shouldn’t have been taken away from me. Starting that day I began exercising and working out, determined to not end up like my parents. For if I gave myself the power to defend not only myself but also all the innocent bystanders out there than truly this can become a better world. I ran from the first foster home I was placed into and never looked back. I didn’t want a normal life anymore, those armed men had taken any chance for that away from me the moment they shattered my innocence. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life but I found out one late night in a twenty-four hour gas station. I was standing to the back of the establishment getting a coffee; it was late. I was adding my second sugar packet to the black liquid when I heard the chime near the front of the store. There were two of them and they were talking angrily betwixt themselves. I chose to secret myself in the bathroom to avoid discovery and I had an awful feeling about them from the moment I saw them; it was also clear by the bulge in the larger ones jacket that he was packing some kind of serious heat. Sitting on the toilet in that employee’s only restroom my head was spinning. I had no drive to become a superhero or crime fighter, I just wanted to be left alone, I felt like a higher power had it in for me judging from the amount of armed men that I seem to attract. I don't want what happened to me to happen to anyone else. If by my life or actions I could prevent another from losing their innocence, I could sleep soundly at night once more I hoped. I made my choice and was out the door in one fluid motion. Taking in the scene in a quick glance I noticed that the large man had put his gun down momentarily while emptying the register, the other was tormenting the owner demanding that he open the safe threatening his wife with a gun. I am quick and I am brutal; I end it. I leave them alive but they will need a lengthy hospital stay before serving their collective sentences. The owner was thankful and grateful; promising me anything in the store as well as a medal for honor and bravery. I gave his offers no heed telling him only that I need not thanks for my actions. It was that night that my career in the suit officially began. I had become a crime fighter. I had become The Nighthawk.