Charles Jenkins III

[Karl the Mad]

Name: Charles Alfred Jenkins III (AKA Chuck, Alfie, CJ, etc)
Age: 106
Gender: Male
Species: Superhuman

Strengths: Thanks to a varied and difficult upbringing, Charles tends to take a very DIY approach to situations, from a broken-down car or machine to the planning and execution of assassinations. This contributes to a strong sense of self and a fierce independence, complimented by mechanical and survival skills honed in all manner of environments. On a practical level this means that sooner or later, his possessions will take on a homemade or garage-shop feel, in particular his vehicles, weapons and clothing. Related to this are the nearly eighty straight years spent in military service in all corners of the globe, which have honed him into a perfect soldier; he is comfortable in any field of battle and knows his way around even the most obscure weapon systems and firearms, although he is deadlier by far with his bare hands or a simple knife than with any gun, and he can do things with vehicles that would make Jeff Gorden envious.

While overseas he came to the attention of an entity known so far only as Doctor X, who acquired and experimented on him, instilling him with strange powers and abilities. They are largely of a mental nature, such as telepathic communication and psychokinesis, although he also has more offensive powers at his fingertips, including short but powerful psychic bursts ("mind blasts"), mental shields that can bounce any psychic assaults back at their source, and most horrendously, the ability to invade another person's mind and inflict harm ("mind rape"). A side-effect of this experimentation is that he has a high resistance to the mind-rending Black Speech of the Void Weavers; what would drive others to madness is just harmless noise or vaguely familiar symbols, to him.

On a much more supernatural level, Charles possesses fast healing, in that his body can recover from injuries far more quickly and efficiently than normal. Even seemingly lethal injuries are little more than setbacks for him, requiring a retreat and extended bedrest; sixteen hours at the most, and he'll be back on his feet and covered in a new set of scars, although ravenous and quite thirsty at the same time. A streamlined set of GI processes increases the efficiency of the healing and recovery even more.

-Fast healing: So long as he isn't explicitly killed or dead, his body can reconstitute itself even from the very brink of death. Nigh-immune to illnesses and poisons, high resistance to the Black Speech of the Void Weavers
-Telepathy: Capable of silent mental communication, short bursts of psychic energy ("mind blasts"), defensive mental shielding, and violent telepathic intrusion or "mind rape"
-Special Forces operative since WWII, one of the first and among the longest-serving; incredibly deadly on a mundane level, highly skilled in many areas of warfare and combat; mastery of many "modern" martial arts
-Grew up in Prohibition and the Great Depression, thus takes a very "DIY" approach to things; especially weaponry and vehicles

Weaknesses: His body's regeneration is not perfect; if the injuries are severe enough they must be set to keep them from healing wrong, and he must be carefully guarded if he falls into a coma while his body rebuilds itself. Any act of healing drains him, and the worse the injuries are the more he has to restore himself afterward; typically this just means an insatiable hunger and a great thirst, and there is a risk of mental instability if there is insufficient food or water on hand when he wakes. Decapitation or loss of limbs are especially tricky; the severed appendage must be swiftly recovered and replaced, the skin stitched back, or the wound will heal over or his head will die, and presumably his body will too. The inner viscera, nerves and bone and vessels and such, will look after itself so long as it has its mates to attach back to.

His mental abilities come with significant drawbacks, of course. Where Aidan Drake has the luxury of seeking emotional balance to keep his powers in check, Charles was subjected to every extreme possible, deliberately or otherwise; his raw output and prowess are that much stronger, of course, but at the expense of his emotional health and psychological well-being: he cannot sleep well, is prone to severe headaches and nosebleeds, and has intense nightmares and waking visions. As well, whether he uses his powers or not he experiences peculiar mental pressures pushing him toward psychopathy and homicidal acts; if he doesn't act on these impulses and vent them accordingly, the pressure will overwhelm him and he succumbs to breakdowns of horrendous violence and insanity. Once this threshold is crossed, there are only two outlets; put him down hard, fast and permanently, or wait it out and hope he doesn't kill anyone or destroy anything too important.

-The worse off he is, the more carefully he must be watched while healing; a paper cut will heal up instantly, but an otherwise fatal wound will knock him out for hours while his body repairs itself. Will wake up extremely hungry and thirsty due to his body's requirements; streamlined GI processes only help a little.
-Due to the origins of his mental powers, is prone to headaches and murderous bouts. Alcoholism, chronic insomnia, nightmares and strange visions. Must vent his murderous impulses at least twice a year, or will suffer insanely violent breakdowns.

Appearance: Strip Charles naked and put him on display, and one would see a moderately tall man with a multitude of scars and old wounds covering his body, untidy blond hair dithering this way and that on his head and a patchy blond beard that vaguely resembles muttonchops. His eyes are an unsettling shade of summer-sky blue, set deep within cavernous eye sockets below thick brows; the underside of his jaw and chin is a mass of acid burns, and his lips are unnaturally extended in a gruesome Glasgow grin. His wrists and inner forearms bear a great many smaller white marks, as if he once went through a cutting phase; most of the marks interlace to form arcane symbols he doesn't know the meaning of, only that sometimes he goes to bed clean and wakes up in the morning, after a fitful sleep plagues by unspeakable nightmares, clutching knives in his hands and covered in blood with new scars forming on his arms. He's attempted to cover these up with tribal tattoos and kanji symbols, with only partial success so far. On his back, up between his shoulder blades along the spinal cord, are a loose grouping of pale red scars, nasty and badly healed; the marks of Doctor X's tampering.

Most of his mouth was ruined by a failed attempt at cyanide suicide, and many teeth were subsequently yanked out by tribal Afghan torturers; when he made it home he had the rest surgically removed, and a variety of dentures crafted in their stead. These include normal teeth, unnaturally white and straight ones, yellowed and stained and crooked teeth, vampiric fangs and even shark-like steel chompers. They serve also to distort the shape of his mouth, making identification a little more difficult.

As far as dress goes he shows a marked preference for fatigues and khaki, although he doesn't show a particular favorite pattern; one day he may wear brown and orange desert outfits, the next white and gray for winter or mossy oak breakup for forest combat. He never mixes them, though, and he always wears the same pair of beaten-down black boots; he refuses to replace them, instead electing to repair and refurbish them as needed. Typically he also wears dual shoulder holsters, and depending on what day it is one or both holsters will be loaded; by far his favored sidearms are a matched pair of custom Colts, nickel-plated .45 1911 Super Specials with contoured rubber grips, reflex sights, extended magazines and vented muzzle brakes. He also prefers a Cold Steel Espada XL folding knife, which weighs nearly a pound and sports a razor-sharp blade over seven inches long; despite its size it is surprisingly easy for him to conceal, and though he keeps it clean one can assume it has seen its share of life's blood.

-5'11", 190 lb, muscular and lithe; dirty blonde hair, unsettling blue eyes in an oddly handsome face; multitude of scars all over his body
-Prefers quasi-military dress, usually in desert themes; khakis, "digital" camouflage patterns, well-worn boots, etc.
-Almost always packing heat, typically a .45 1911 Super Special (nickel-plated, custom grip, extended clips and a featherweight laser sight) as well as a seven inch butterfly knife; if the situation calls for it, he'll of course carry other weapons or firearms

Behavior: To simply write Charles off as a victimized murderer, while not entirely inaccurate, wouldn't exactly be fair either. To be honest, he has done reprehensible things in the past, of his own volition and not, and years of such service has of course left its marks on him; he has difficulty empathizing or connecting with others, believing subconsciously that either they will betray him, or he'll be forced to betray them instead. As a result, he is psychotically protective of the few friends and family he has, a character trait he often struggles with for various reasons. No one likes being pressured or hemmed in, after all. He doesn't believe in screwing around when it comes to fights or violence, usually preferring to escalate it immediately to levels others may consider extreme or inhumane; anything to end it quickly, since the longer a situation goes on the worse it will turn out for all involved. This isn't to say he's always that way, as he enjoys a friendly sparring match or a few hours at the shooting range as much as the next guy. He displays a surprisingly ability with languages as well, being fluent in English, Spanish, French, Vietnamese and Russian, and serviceable with German, Farsi and Arabic; he doesn't have a fixed accent, changing his tone and mannerisms sometimes in mid-sentence, and likes playing games on people with this peculiarity.

On a day to day basis he works hard to be sane and civil, making conscious efforts to present himself well and maintain a professional demeanor (especially in regards to his businesses). This doesn't always work of course, for reasons outlined elsewhere, but this doesn't stop him from trying. As mentioned above he is forced to acts of homicide and psychopathy about two or three times a year, and by now he is very good and very, very clinical about it: his victims are always abruptly kidnapped or snatched up, never from the same place twice; he never lets them see his face, employing masks, glasses and intense lighting to blind them and prevent any recognition at all; the murderous acts themselves never happen in the same location either, although he always works it out ahead of time, looking for remote areas with good drainage that can be closed off easily from the outside; he wears hazmat gear as well, both to keep blood or anything from getting on him and to keep anything of his from mixing up with the victim's remains. Even then, of course, he is always careful to dispose of the body in ways that prevent identification: cremation, dissolution in acid, dismemberment and scattering (after successive baths in bleach and gasoline, of course), or similar methods. He always chooses his victims from those who won't be easily missed or noticed, like migrant workers, homeless vagrants, beggars and drug addicts and street walkers.

As far as actual operations go he employs as much stealth as possible, and after so many years in clandestine service he is quite stealthy when needed. If something a little more showy is called for, he takes his cues from the fictional supervillains of movie and comic fame, particularly that eternal Batman foe the Joker; warpaint and scar-enhancing makeup, garish outfits for himself and his crew (as well as body armor underneath), grandiose and nihilistic speeches, and a cavorting if somewhat stilted way of speaking punctuated by maniacal laughter. As often as not, these displays are window-dressing while the real work happens elsewhere; hackers diverting the silent alarm and cutting the phone lines while a specialist crew cracks the vaults, or a fellow with a silenced gun takes out that day's target from a nearby rooftop, or whatever else is needed. Radios and short-range bluetooths are always employed as well, without exception; he and his men know all too well the stupidity of a crew that doesn't stay in touch.

In his personal habits he is oddly clean, showering every night and trimming what beard he has left on his face. He disdains smoking and hard drugs, sticking only to alcohol and marijuana for recreation, and keeps himself in shape with a strenuous workout and training regimen. He always washes his clothing, enjoys vehicle restoration, and tries not to stare at people like he's thinking of the most efficient ways to silence them (which he usually is anyway, of course; old habits and all that).

Goals: Above all, Charles wants to stay off the radar and maintain some semblance of anonymity, both for his own sake and for those under his command or employ. He works hard to keep his businesses solvent, finding solace in the work even if it's not always honest or entirely legitimate; these include a used car lot, a junkyard and scrap recycling center, a taxi garage and moving service, gunrunning and street-level mercenary work. Thanks to years of overseas networking and foreign contacts, these endeavors are moderately successful, ensuring that he'll always have a layer of money between him and any trouble that might come along; liquidate it all and put it in the bank, and you might see four, maybe four and a half million dollars there. He also wants to undo what Doctor X did to him, or at least find a way to alleviate the crippling pressure he is always living with, although he has come to accept that this may not be possible within a single lifetime.

History:
-Born 1919 to a rural family, the second of seven; Jenkinses were winemakers, distillers, brewers. At least until Prohibition forced them into rumrunning and working with the Mafia.
-Consequently Charles grew up around moonshine, cars, guns and stills and money; was using wrenches and grease guns as soon as he could grasp them; learned reading, writing and math in speakeasies as he grew up
-Learned to shoot before he was ten; turns out hunting game wasn't much different from hunting rival gangs and runners; somehow found time for school during the Great Depression
-1939 was caught redhanded holding up a gas station; authorities gave him a choice between prison or the army; he took the army, two years later WWII happened and he wouldn't come home for over thirty years
-Took to the war fairly easy given previous experiences; became a sharpshooter and was snapped up by OSS; one of America's first Special Operations grunts
-At some point in all that death his natural resilience became a factor, probably when he was supposed to die himself but didn't; combined with a refusal to give up and an inability to snap made him quite the asset
-Went to Japan, Germany, Russia and Korea and Vietnam; died a dozen times over but it never really stuck; and then in 1965 Doctor X found him and his life was never the same again
-Charles has no real recollection of the next few months, save for some dim nightmares and hideous visions and a bearded fellow in a dirty labcoat; next clear memories involve waking up in a trauma ward and knocking a trolley over without touching it; apparently he had powers! now, not just a hardwired refusal to stay dead
-Around this time America was experimenting with "special" soldiers like him thanks to Karthian patronage; he was trained in his new skills even if the source of them wasn't quite clear; some of them thought he had Karthian ancestry to account for how easily he took to them
-((buncha blacks ops bullshit + psychokinesis & murderous rampages + yet more bullshit))
-1973 he came home, tracked his family to Hope just in time for alien invasions and stuff; after the dust settled he found out he had grandkids and there was much family reunion rejoicing
-Stuck around long enough to make sure they were still properly redneck and criminal and such and then they shipped him off again to the Middle East and similar bullshit places
-((even more black ops bullshit + awesome psychokinesis & utterly leveled villages + so much bullshit you have no idea))
-2019 finally came home for good, had no idea what to do with himself; gathered another army and went in for anarchy and terrorism
-2020 ended up in Hope again; kidnapped hobos and addicts and homeless folks from storm drains beneath Renton; ran afoul of Jimmy Winters and had to pack up again
-2021 made the acquaintance of one Abraham Zahavi, Israeli black ops badass with business and psych degrees; managed to settle down into a stable criminal lifestyle, although how he's still free what with the inescapable murder urges is anyone's guess
-Present Day! Small-time criminal presence, runs a few blocks the big boys lost track of; does gunrunning, chop shops, metal recycling, even a legitimate used car lot and city-wide taxi/moving service (CJ's Taxi & Movers); occasionally he even attends Commission meetings!