If it's worth doing it's worth over-doing

User Name/Nick: KaOS
User DW: thiswasatriumph
E-mail: promotedtocondiments [at] gmail
Other Characters: none

Character Name: Overkill
Series: The Tick (the 2017 version)
Age: 30s probably
From When?: season 1 episode 12, right after he passes out while dead in the car with Dot post-torture by Miss Lint. (Yeah, I'll get into that a little more in depth later, it's weird)

Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Overkill approaches life, or more accurately his superhero pursuits, with ruthless precision, operating with blatant disregard for the safety of others or how much force is actually required to stop a bad guy. He kills indiscriminately with excessive force (thus his superhero name of Overkill) so long as his opponent is a bad guy, with zero remorse.
Item: n/a
Arrival: brought in post-death
Abilities/Powers: technically nothing above and beyond human capabilities, they're just peak human condition. He's never described or shown as having actual superhuman abilities other than obstinate resilience that's more to do with years of training and pigheadedness than anything else. He's stronger than most, faster than most, has better reflexes than most, and is more durable than most, is an expert marksman and super competent with most weapons, and possesses pretty impressive special ops-type skills including hiding and dropping out of seemingly nowhere and disappearing just as quickly. He's essentially Batman in many respects. Canonically he's also withstood actual death for 8 minutes while remaining conscious somehow, a feat he attributed to superior training, determination, rage, a vendetta, and military strength Adderall.

It's also worth mentioning he's got some cybernetic parts, namely hands and eyes; before he made the transition to Overkill from Straight Shooter he went toe to toe with the Terror and ended up having both hands pretty significantly mangled and losing vision in both eyes to weaponized syphilis. Since then he's had his hands and eyes replaced with cybernetic versions, so he's got super strong robo-hands and a few extra settings on his eyes including infrared. It's implied he's got a few extra benefits from the cybernetic parts/other things that were rebuilt when he got his eyes and hands, but exactly what that means hasn't been explained in detail yet; reflexes, durability and strength likely aren't out of the question (particularly considering it's a bit of a stretch, even for television, to assume his ability to continue to hold a completely lucid conversation after clinical death is actually attributable to what he claims), but thus far haven't been confirmed.

Personality: Overkill is essentially a massive parody of the grimdark antihero trope. He curses like it's his job, grunts and snarls instead of talking like a normal person, walks around in an armor plated body sock specifically designed to be as over the top as possible with more weapons than reasonable, has a stubborn streak to the point where it's actually damaging to himself and those around him, and kills bad guys with way too much force just because they're bad guys. His entire motivation for existence is even a parody of the trope; his entire team (mostly) was killed by the Big Bad, he somehow managed to survive against the odds, he was kicked off his SECOND team for being categorically unable to play well with others, and now it's his mission in life to kill the Big Bad, especially if it gets him killed in the process. It's as if he found a checklist and just kept going until he hit every single box; it's ridiculous.

But then, that's mostly the point of the show; everyone is a trope of the superhero genre, from the dimwitted but enthusiastic boy scout to the fledgling, insecure brainiac, to the over the top villain, and Overkill just fills his particular trope.

Except, much like all the other characters, while he hits all the boxes that's not the entirety of his character. He started out as something of a boy scout himself, an overeager, incredibly naive kid who was really good with a gun and wanted to run with the big boys. He was the sidekick of one of the founding members of the Flag Five, the biggest-deal superhero group in his universe, and while not everybody on the team thought he belonged there, necessarily, he did his best to operate at their level, and they were his family. So when they were taken down by the Terror, ultimately with his help (unwittingly), his entire world was destroyed with it. It would be enough to send anyone careening in the opposite direction.

In its wake, after a lot of attempts to cope it eventually got to be too much for him and he started to get reckless. To see the world in more black and white, good and evil, and to tread further into the world of grey in the process. Evil needed to be wiped out, by whatever means necessary, and the more he worked at it the more extreme his methods became; Evil hadn't had any mercy for his family, after all, so why should he grant them any in return? It was what got him kicked out of AEGIS, eventually, because they just couldn't keep him in check any longer. He's got a hell of a dose of survivor's guilt because he survived when a lot of, in his mind anyway, better superheroes didn't, and as a result he operates with pretty blatant disregard of his own life too; he waxes poetic at one point about how the pinnacle of his actions would be "revenge-soaked suicide", and operates throughout the season as if his own life doesn't really matter so long as the end goal of killing the Terror is achieved. He even dies at one point in canon after being electrocuted, and only bothers to point it out to another character when she tells him how unwell he looks, and makes no effort to ask her to help, just mentions it as casually as if he's talking about the weather. He's got a death wish the size of Alaska and doesn't really care who knows it.

A fact which really isn't helped by his massive trust issues, excessive to the point of almost being funny if it wasn't so incredibly sad. At one point a character asks him, point blank, to help her improve her stance for shooting, and he's so incredibly awkward and reluctant to even initiate contact, after she specifically asks him to physically correct her stance, that he gets immediately called out on it. The events that led to the death of his team were, ultimately, in part his fault, although he wasn't aware of it until after the fact. He was seduced by one of the villains and gave her the security codes for their base, which led directly to the Flag Five's downfall, a fact which he's taken incredibly hard since then even though, rationally, there was probably no way he could have known ahead of time. Consequently, he's incredibly mistrusting, to the point where it's difficult for him to even get along with others without assuming the worst of them, or even have pretty common interactions with others without second-guessing into oblivion.

But at his core, even despite everything else, he's still not that bad a guy. He operates according to a code, one which includes life debts and loyalty to those who show they're deserving of it. He gives up his chance on getting revenge to save Arthur, he promises not to kill any more bad guys after the Tick saves his life, he gives one of his guns to Dot so she can have some protection when he's not around even after complaining that she's a liability, and even tries, in his own way, to help ensure she's not completely helpless by giving her a gun more suited to her size and trying to teach her how to shoot. It's absolutely all in his own way, since he refuses to acknowledge his alliance with the Tick and Arthur, he still uses excessive force in his fights with the bad guys even if he's only knocking them out, and he complains about helping Dot every step of the way, but even so he still helps them and tries to tone things down some.

At the end of the day, Overkill generally comes across as an emotionally stunted teenager who managed to find a cool looking paintball suit and runs around taking out his Issues on everyone around him. He hits, shoots, or stabs any obstacle in his way and actively tries to alienate the few people who still want to hang around him anyway (for some reason) because if there's nobody close to him he doesn't have to talk about his Feelings and he can pretend he's Totally Completely Fine.

Barge Reactions: In some respects, Overkill won't be caught all that off-guard by the Barge; being a superhero in the City isn't without its own degree of weirdness, seeing as how superheroes (and villains) with legitimate superpowers are real, they have their own version of Superman, and one of the members of the Flag Five was a sentient, talking dog. All the different types of Barge residents and all their varied skill sets, origins, and general make-up won't throw him too bad, and while he won't LIKE the idea of being locked up for his Crimes he'll be able to adapt. However, the influences of the world around the Barge, like floods and ports and things, may throw him for more of a loop. And even if they didn't, he still wouldn't appreciate them much, considering they're influences out of his control he can't fight or alter appreciably and, well, he hasn't had the best experiences with those kinds of things.

Path to Redemption: Overkill's main hang-up is his general approach to, well, quite frankly everything. He moves through the world trying to cut a path of least resistance through it, a path that often both causes bigger problems for everyone else and isn't really the best or healthiest choice. He kills people rather than try to give them a chance to improve because he truly believes there is no redeeming Evil, or even just common criminals, and it's better for everyone to just destroy them than try. He refuses to acknowledge his feelings and clings to his revenge quest like it's everything he has in the world even when he's shown that there are other things he can spend his life on because he'd rather wallow in shit, self-loathing and guilt than try to move forward.

That being said, he's not without his more human leanings. He abandons his vengeance-quest to help save Arthur, and to help keep Dot safe, citing that family is the most important thing to him. More important than vengeance, even, so it's only fitting that it's a threat to family that makes him abandon his mission, even if the family at stake isn't his own. In order to graduate Overkill needs to take a good hard look at the way his life is right now and forgive himself for the mistakes he's made that he refuses to stop punishing himself for. He needs to be able to let go of his quest for revenge and start to try to reintegrate with society and stop approaching every bad guy like they're a disease that needs to be wiped out since it's generally more complicated than that. He's still got a shred of humanity left, so focusing on that aspect, on family and his feelings on it, is probably the best route; he lost his family, and it's what fuels his vengeance-quest these days, so forcing him to examine what it means to him and its role in why he is where he is these days would be a good place to start.

He most likely would benefit from a warden who's patient and won't take his bullshit, who will encourage him to act like a person rather than a murder-robot and force him to take a hard look at his life and choices. He needs an ally, or a friend, depending on how you want to spin it, even if he'll fight it tooth and nail the whole way. He needs to learn to let go, that the world doesn't end just because you're dealt a shitty hand, and that holding on to the past with a death grip and refusing to move forward, refusing to live, doesn't change any of it.

Deal: n/a

History: Overkill started out as a much milder, more reasonable vigilante, a kid with high hopes who was a sidekick to one of the best in the business and just wanted to Do the Right Thing. Make the world better. Help people and stop the bad guys. That is, right up until his hero and most of the rest of the team were brutally murdered at the hands of the Terror, and after that things got a little darker.

Traumatized by the experience, and reeling from the loss of his vision and hands in the process, he went back to work for the government, specifically a group called AEGIS who are basically superhero handlers, who gave him cybernetic implants for his eyes and cybernetic hands to match. He took a much more brutal approach after that, his methods growing more and more extreme until they finally let him go, deciding he was too big a liability. Since then he's been doing his damnedest trying to track down the Terror, who he's convinced is still alive, and wipe out as much of the criminal element in the City as possible, no matter what.

Once Arthur came into the picture he found himself with more tangible proof, a development that led to a reluctant team-up and a madcap rush to try to do something about it and, ultimately, his death at the hands of one of the Terror's henchmen (or more accurately, henchwoman, who also happens to be a former flame. No, that's not complicated at all).

Sample Journal Entry:
PUBLIC -- video

[There's a very irritated humanoid in black body armor with a skull-faced helmet and glowing blue eyes glowering at the network today. Better with some ambiguity, he figures; he still feels like shit, at least this way he can pretend. The voice that comes out is almost tinny, but pretty clearly through a voice changer.]

What the fuck. Where the fuck is this, who the fuck is running the show. I swear to God if you don't tell me what the fuck is going on somebody's gonna get gutted. At least.

[Yeah, he seems to be handling this well.]

And if you took her, if you hurt her, I'm gonna do a hell of a lot more than that to you. So go ahead. Show yourself, you coward.
Sample RP: When he opens his eyes, he's on the boat, sprawled on his cot and feeling like death warmed over. His nerves still feel raw, a faint tracing along his skin and vibrating in his teeth, a twist in his chest, an echo of Janet's (Miss Lint. She's Lint, everything else doesn't matter) handiwork. His heart's beating again, he can feel it thudding in his chest like nothing happened, so Dot must have done something. Got him back to Dangerboat somehow. Which just leaves Arthur and the Tick and the Terror to worry about.

Sitting up goes alright, nothing lurches dangerously when he shifts position, although he's quick to put a hand against the wall just in case.

"Dot."

If Dangerboat let her onboard to get him here, she's gotta still be around, right? But there's no answer, no sounds to indicate she's around.

"Dangerboat?"

There's no answer, which is weirder. The optic's still there on the ceiling, but there's no light, no swivel. No acknowledgment.

"Goddamnit, you piece of shit. Don't give me the silent treatment now," he growls, taking a step towards the table. But there's no answer, no blink, no nothing. So he kicks at the table when he gets close enough, a gesture which doesn't do jack shit but is better than doing nothing. It tugs at the lingering ache in his chest, and he rubs at it absently through his armor.

Fuck this.

He heads for the door, jabbing at the control panel to open it and stalks outside...

Only to find a hallway on the other side of the door.

He looks back behind him, then back to the hallway. None of this makes any damn sense. What the fuck is going on?

Special Notes:

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