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The Memoirs of Daniel Van Sant
Played By: ThePoet

The Memoirs of Daniel Van Sant by ThePoet

TEAM: Reavers

SECTOR: LOWTOWN

KIT CLASS: Olympian

Reavers Team Sergeant

Hall Of Fame!

Survival - 25 wins!

Brutal - 2 fatalaties!

Fight Record
League Wins: 8
League Losses: 3
Out Of League Wins: 17
Out of League Losses: 8
Total Wins: 25
Total Losses: 11
Frank Crew - Win 13-6
Dina the Dangerous Damsel - Win 13-5
Invincible Cactus - Win 9-3
Psi-Frost - Win 14-2
Deaths Heart Beat - Win 10-6
Jamison, of the ERS - Loss 7-9
Bianca Ordmin - Loss 5-9
Josef Friedrich Clements - Win 7-6
Recurve - Win 8-7
Crow is of Death, Crow is of Doom - Win 9-8
Thomas Bishop - Win 8-6
Glaucon - Loss 4-11
The Khazan Institute of Illicit Art - Loss 6-7
Discriminals Begin - Loss 5-8
Clara Ands - Win 9-5
Baron of Ether - Win 8-5
Armageddon Arms Dealer - Win 6-5
Averse - Loss 6-7
Young Adel - Loss 7-8
Crash and Burn - Loss 6-8
Nurse Helia - Win 10-3
Saint of Pizza Delivery - Loss 5-7
Striker Delta - Win 10-3
BARE CHESTED THUGS - Win 9-5
Robot-Killer Aria - Win 8-3
Billy Hardcore - Win 6-4
Simon.5 - Win 6-5
Baby - Loss 6-8
Dr. Timothy - Loss 4-8
Jim the Vagrant - Win 6-3
Felicity - Win 6-2

It rained last night. It rained the night before too. The rain was overdue. For weeks we had nothing and then torrents. I heard it's supposed to rain tonight too, but I don't know for sure. We'll find out in due time. For now I am content to watch the water flow down the wall of the apartment building and disappear behind the dumpster that services the same building. Then the stream reappears through cracks and rivets in the once perfectly paved alley. It continues to meander down the alley and then it fades into the distance of the dimly illuminated street. If I cared more, I might follow the stream and see where everything ends up. But every time I think about it, my mind comes up with the same response. "Everything ends up in a pile of shit. That water will flow to a sewage treatment center. And your emotions will still be as fragmented and torn as they are now."

I wish I could tell you life hasn't always been like this, that I've experienced the good side and I just happened to have a turn of really bad luck. Sadly that's just not the case. I'm only fourteen years old, but I feel like a man five times my age, about ready to die at the end of a sorrowful and trite existence. I guess trite isn't the best word. But it's hard to describe my existence in a single adjective. My father was an abusive drunk. I say was because I killed him. I was twelve years old and I'd had enough. I also wish I could tell you that my mother was a kind woman who tried to protect me, but that wasn't true. She was a manic-depressive drunk. She just sat there while my father took out his frustrations and shortcomings on me. Then he would turn and beat her. She was so oblivious that she seemed unfazed by everything that happened. That was my childhood. Not very glorious or noteworthy, but everyone starts somewhere.

 

Personality: My teenage years still remain somewhat of an enigma now that I look back upon them. I never had any of what most people would call "proper" school or education. It is a true regret that I have, but my experiences living day to day on the street more than compensated. I couldn't tell you how to calculate tangents or inequalities on a graph and I can't tell you in the present either, but life has worked out fine for the most part.

The peculiar and interesting thing I learned during my teenage years is that not all things can be taught. For example, geography and English can be taught. They deal in facts. Cat is a noun. Khazan is a city. Simple facts that most anyone can learn. Those things are finite and tangible where as life in my area of town is anything but concrete. A pimp or a bookie may not notice your presence one day and be breathing down your neck the next. Nothing for certain and if you don't know how to adapt, you're dead. All it takes is for someone to hate you enough to act on it. And all it takes is one bullet or knife slash to do the job. Looking back it's a small miracle I survived that time of my life. I'll take the miracle though, especially considering the alternative.

 

Strength:

 

 Superior The pinnacle of human strength.
Can bench press 1000 pounds.		Agility:

 

Superior This fighter can dodge, weave and move
with the grace of an Olympic gymnast.
Body:

 

Superior Hardy.
Takes punishment like a heavyweight fighter or wrester. 		Mind:

 

Superior Highly educated and ingenious.
A smart cookie.

Tell Me Lies

  • Power: Mind Blast
  • Level:Superior
  • Auto-Hit This mental attack hits the target automatically, but may or may not effect them.
  • Area Effect This attack causes damage in a large area.
  • Ranged Attack Attack usable at a distance (only).
Language is a strange and variable beast. I think it is a quirk by its very nature. Not quirky, there's a difference. Language is a quirk of human existence. It's a nuance, an afterthought, something we could survive without using. I suppose in a sense it is also quirky, but then it would be a quirky quirk and that just sounds stupid and rhetorical. Hmmph, language, just another way for human beings to fuck with each others' minds and wreak emotional havoc if used properly. Don't get me wrong, eloquent and quick use of language has saved my life on several occasions, but it still pisses me off. I only used it to live, other people use it to invoke fear, coerce action, intimidate, profit, and any other unsavory verb.

People wonder why I'm so gifted with language and eloquence. They have good and many reasons to wonder. I went to the poorest school in the poorest part of Khazan City. I became a street orphan at the age of twelve. I could have gone and lived at an actual orphanage I suppose, but something in my gut told me it would be better on the streets alone. My answer for this one is simple; practice, practice, practice. That and some minor help from grammar textbooks. I practiced on my father. You don't actually think I took those beatings willingly do you? I fought back because I was finally strong enough to do it. Before then I resorted to cunning and language. It usually involved offering to go get dad more liquor or getting him pissed at someone else so he would go beat them up instead of me. I'm not very proud of passing his anger on to someone else, but it was them or me. And if I can help it, it's never going to be me.

Stray Cat Strut

I've been called a moral paradox. Not by anyone you know, more by my own sub-conscious self. I fought back against the unjust and almost inhuman thrashings of my father, yet I did nothing at all to help my mother besides killing him. I guess it was an attitude of mild neglect, the way she always treated me. But she's my mother, I just thought I would care more. I help out the underdog in a fight, but when push comes to shove I'm done. People call that a fair weather friend. Only problem is friendship doesn't have shit to do with my reasons. I hate seeing people getting beat against overwhelming odds when they can't do anything about it. It burns hotter if I know the underdog doesn't deserve it. That's why I took up martial arts.

The sad part about this is that I had no formal training. I couldn't afford a dojo or a karate class or anything fancy like that. My style and training was mostly a process of assimilation and osmosis. I'd see a fighter do really well on the street and emulate him. Or I'd glimpse a karate demonstration on television or through a window. Bits and pieces of whole fighting styles made their way in to my repertoire. The one true advantage is my lack of qualms about using it. Karate students are taught to only use their training in self-defense. Too restricted. If a guy pisses me off I drop him right then and there. I don't need to wait for him to throw the first punch. Besides, if he punches hard enough I won't be able to retaliate in kind. First strike capability, handy little concept. It really worked well one night. Scored me several hundred dollars and a good deed.

It was fairly simple. A well-dressed businessman came out of one of the office buildings in my neighborhood. It was dark outside and the bus stop was several blocks away. I knew he'd get mugged, robbed, stabbed, beaten, and most likely killed before he got there. Just the way things were around here. He may as well have had a target painted on him. So I followed him. Sure enough, two punks waylaid him in an alley. I recognized them as two guys I already hated. They didn't care if he had money on him or anything, they just wanted to inflict pain. Any money a victim had was just icing on the cake. They got in a few good shots before I got there. Taking them down was easy enough. I knocked them out before anyone knew what was going on. Their victim was unconscious and bleeding by the time I went to check him. I lugged him to an emergency clinic about two blocks away and gave him to a nurse. I took his wallet. I figured it was a nominal price for saving his life. Like I said, moral paradox. I try to do the right thing, but most of the time it's not worth it.

Kinetic Absorption

Scraping out a living on the streets wears on you, just ask anyone who's done it. Sleeping in alleys, dumpsters, abandoned cars; Scrounging for food and spare change in those same places, never knowing where you're going or what will happen next. It's no way to live, especially during the winter when things get cold at night. I actually didn't mind sleeping outdoors much during the summer, I just didn't like the rotten refuse smell.

I've never been a very lucky person. And I'm kind of a pessimist if you haven't already guessed. Yes I'm proactive to a point and yes I try to learn, but I still have a pretty dim view of the world. I think it's due to the amount of shit I've been through. Anyhow, one night was my lucky night, if you could call it that.

This is the part where you learn about underground prize fighting. It's a lot different than that pussy boxing you'll see on sports channels. There's no elegant boxing ring, or boxing gloves, or timed rounds or comfortable seating. This is underground fighting, literally. Usually in some warehouse basement. It's a chalk circle drawn on a hard concrete floor, bookies who take bets, and crowds of screaming onlookers. They're not fans, they just want to see someone hurt. It's fairly simple. It's you and one other fighter. You fight until one of you can't continue. If you win, you get a small share of what the bookies made on the fight, if you lose, they'll drag you off to the side of the warehouse and leave you there. Fight Club on steroids, nasty business.

Now I said this was my lucky night. First off, I was a huge underdog in this fight. They'd actually publicized it a little around the neighborhood. Not too much because this is technically illegal. But I was up against a guy who was six feet, ten inches tall and about double my size. I mean, I'm 5'9" and not exactly small, but he was a colossus. Anyhow, we started fighting. I was quicker, so I was able to get in a few punches here and there, but they didn't seem to faze him one bit. He got a few punches in too, thankfully none of them were on my head. To make a long story short, I got behind him somehow and chop-blocked his left knee. He went down hard. I got him into a sleeper hold and choked him out. Not bad for a scrawny guy. I'd just won a cut of a huge prize purse. To top it off, Darren Carlson was at the fight. He owned the Salty Dog Tavern, the roughest tavern in the roughest part of lowtown. He came up to me as I was getting my winnings and offered me a job as a bouncer/bartender.

"Any man who can beat that guy." He said, "can work at my bar any day."

"Done." I croaked.

The Piano Man

The fickleness and whimsicality of the world never ceases to amaze me. I mean, I went from street wanderer to bartender of a respectable tavern in the space of five minutes. Well, respectable may not be the right word. Respected and feared would be more appropriate. If you'd lived in Lowtown or even visited more than twice, you know about the Salty Dog. I wasn't lying when I said it was the roughest tavern in the city. You know how some factories and stores will have a running total of a certain number of days without an accident or incident. The Salty Dog ran it in reverse. Their tally started over if there was no fight, injury or murder. The record is 767 straight days. If that's not enough, the clientele consisted of pimps, hookers, druggies, junkies, lowlifes, degenerates, thugs, thieves, burglars, hustlers, swindlers, con artists, pickpockets, and anyone else brave enough to enter.

The afore-mentioned customers all came in for a drink and some grub. That's where I came in. It was my job to pour the drinks, serve the food, and make sure that when fights did break out, damage to the tavern was minimized. Things went pretty smoothly. I did my job and soon the customers knew I wasn't someone to take lightly. I think breaking four arms, two legs, several dozen fingers, and giving out a few concussions on my first night helped. It sent a message. Between that first night and my notoriety of winning the prize fight, most people took a hint and wanted nothing to do with me in a fight. This meant more fighting broke out in the alley behind the Salty Dog and on the street out front, but that's better than stuff actually happening inside. And for references' sake, the fights that started just outside the club counted as part of our "Consecutive Days with Violence" tally. After all, losing a so-called good reputation will lose you business and neither Darren nor myself wanted that.

Danger Sense

Tingling feelings work in one of two ways. Well, they work the same, but they generally illicit one of two reactions. It's usually a warm and fuzzy reaction, like some people get when they love another person. Or it's an urge to simply run as far and as fast as you can. For example, when someone points a gun directly at your head, you might get that tingling sensation. Now as I said, a tingling feeling will bring about one of two reactions. That changed when I met her. I still don't quite know her full story, but she seems content to bury it in her past and leave it there. Now the interesting thing is that when I met her, I got that tingling sensation. But I had compulsions for both responses. She was gorgeous, absolutely stunning. But something about her told me I didn't want anything to do with her. I guess I'll tell you the story and let you decide.

I'd been working at the bar for about 8 years. Darren had died about 2 years before and left me the bar. I asked him why me and he said that I was the only person he trusted to run the place as it should be run. She walked into the bar one night. Maybe disheveled by her standards, but goddess-like by mine and most of my patrons. I could tell she was sad, distraught over something that had happened. Normally I wouldn't have cared, but God was she gorgeous. She asked me for a menu and I chuckled a bit. She started to sob and wince a bit. That's when I knew this girl was extremely fragile, a ticking clock if I didn't handle things right. I took a gamble and offered her a burger, fries and a soda. She weakly nodded a yes so I went and got the drink and put in the food order. Then I noticed something else. All of the patrons were staring at her too. Bad news as this place can turn ugly real quick. Luckily by now I had a reputation, and a mean one at that. I started staring down everybody, one by one. All my regulars got the message. This girl was under my protection. Messing with her was messing with me and none of the regulars in their right mind would do that. And they even had the sense to tell those who didn't understand why I was staring at them with death in my eyes.

When the food came she devoured it, kind of uncharacteristic for a girl of her class and stature. But I supposed she hadn't eaten in a long time and she probably didn't care much about pretenses right now. She was sad and hungry, and eating would fix at least one of those things. I asked her what was wrong. At first she was quiet, an unsteady look in her eyes, sort of like a trapped animal. Then she started listing out every detail of the past twelve hours. Her father, lunch, a gun, trauma, it all came at me so fast that I had a lot of trouble handling it. I did though, I've dealt with many of those same things. After she was finished talking, I asked her what she was going to do. Bad move, she started crying again. I quickly asked if she would like to lie down. I keep a cot back in my storage area for just such emergencies. She accepted and I led her back. Good thing too. My patrons know I mean business, but a lot of them are bold and stupid. They were looking frisky again which meant trouble for me and this girl. I got her to the cot though and she went to sleep.

Another Day in Paradise

  • Power: Projectile Attack
  • Level:Superior
  • Area Effect This attack causes damage in a large area.
  • Multi Attack Attack can hit multiple times during one strike.
It took awhile, but I finally got Jessica into a state of relative calm and normalcy. Well, normal for me, a bit on the rough and unusual side for her. I gave her a job at the bar. At first it was just simple stuff, running food to tables, clearing tables, washing dishes, that sort of thing. After awhile it escalated. I got her to go and take orders, flirt with the customers, and even dance on the bar when I had some of the more "respectable" clientele in the house. Respectable meaning someone who didn't have a current arrest warrant or bookmaking pinch active. I even let her use that gun I gave her when fights broke out. She kept it on her inner thigh, just above the hem-line on her skirt. You could just see it when she was dancing. It was a warning not to try anything funny with her. But as I said, some of the clientele were very stupid and they have the scars to show for it.

I originally gave her the piece because she needed protection in this part of town. I took her to a shooting range and taught her what I knew of shooting. Admittedly I don't know much, but my buddy Jack Richards happened to be there that day and gave her a few pointers. He owed me a little because he won a load of cash on that fight I told you about. She was a natural. Bull's eye almost every time. Jack gave me the same pointers, but I still couldn't hit the bull's eye. Occasionally I would hit the target. That's when he suggested I use a shotgun. He went and got one from his..., I guess the word is store.

Unbelievable difference. I was hitting the bull's eye every time now. Granted I also hit most of the target with it, but this was fun. No need to aim, just point and shoot. I asked him what I owed him for the gun and he told me that we were even. I guess he really did make a load of money on that fight.

So that's the way it went. Anytime something happened in the bar, Jessica would handle the precision shooting when we only wanted to hit one person, and I would handle things when we didn't care who got hit. Good system I think. Me and my lady, we make quite a team. We dated. Never got married. Still aren't married. We're together and that's that. If you'd told me I would have a life like this when I was 14 years old, I'd have said you were full of shit and probably beaten the hell out of you for senseless optimism. And I don't know if this is karma or poetic justice or something along those lines, but I got my girl and she's got me. And I can live with that. I'm 31 years old, and life is finally working out just fine.