ASH

Real name: Anthony Michael Pindaro
Occupation: Vagabond
Identity: Not known to anyone living
Legal status: His fake ID lists him as a citizen of the United States with no prior convictions, but his true identity would probably set off a lot of flags in the police systems if ever ran. Despite this, Anthony Michael Pindaro was presumed dead at an explosion in Detroit and thus has no true legal status any longer.
Other aliases: Always went as Ash for the past 3 years.
Place of birth: Detroit, Michigan
Marital status: Single
Known relatives: The entire Pindaro crime Family was wiped out three years ago and all his immediate relatives with it.
Group affiliation: None
Base of operations: None
First appearance: October, 2001
History:

(Somewhat condensed version. Page of @mail me if you want the full, spammy one)

Once upon a time (well, actually October 31, 1980), a child that was born in Detroit. Not just any child, however, but a child that was lucky enough to be born into wealth and privilege. Then again, the child, Anthony, never knew until later in life that the wealth and privilege came at a rather high cost. Namely, the cost of never living a normal life. You see, that wealth in which the child was born to was the direct result of the fact that his father was none other than the Capo of the Detroit Pindaro crime Family. That's right kiddies. The Mafia. La Cosa Nostra. Wiseguys. Da Mob.

Any hundred appellations could be contrived to give meaning to the Family in which Fate had landed Anthony, but, to him, it was just the way things were. Given the fact that it was both dangerous for Tony (with all the people who would have loved to get to his father through him) and for the Family (seeing as most kids aren't really all that good at keeping teensy little secrets like their family is the Mob), the young heir to the Pindaro Family was not allowed to go to public school. As such, his early years pretty much consisted of making use of the extensive library at the mansion he lived in, and trying not to hurt his private tutors for bothering him about the subjects he didn't care for.

All this didn't really change much when he turned seven and his cousin Vinny (no jokes please) moved into the mansion along with his parents. The two young Italian kids were just as rambunctious as any children of seven are, but even back then, the differences were apparent. Vinny enjoyed the games where he got to pretend he was a real Wiseguy, whereas Tony was always buried in his books. Of course, Tony's father never took to that fact very well and thus from an early age on, the fights about whether Tony would take more responsibility with the Family when he got older only grew louder and louder.

It wasn't until he'd turned sixteen that he finally cut a deal with his father. In exchange for Tony promising to become a Made Man when he was eighteen and to take his duties more seriously, Tony's father allowed him the chance to go to a public high school for those two years until that. To the young man who'd been pretty much locked up away from people for his entire life, the deal seemed better than anything he could have dreamed of.

The only problem was that when he got there, he discovered a lot of disappointment. The vast majority of his peers he considered narrow-minded, immature, and boring. If not for one redeeming figure in the school he was at, he would have probably asked to revoke the deal with his father and go back to his private tutors and books. And what was that redeeming figure you might ask? None other than Angela Rosa Medicci.

His smart, witty, beautiful, _and_ Italian, Angela was everything that Tony could have ever wanted. And by some trick of Fate they both met and fell pretty much instantly for each other. There was only one problem in all of it, which was never made known to the two kids until later: Medicci was the name of the Family which the Pindaro's had been essentially at war with for years upon years. Given that Family Wars aren't something really advertised, even amongst the non-Made Men of the Families, the two lovebirds had not a clue about what would eventually be the result of their love.

Through sheer luck, or perhaps Fate, their dating went unnoticed by their fathers, given that names never really came up. As such, they were together for nearly three months before anything got noticed. And the reason it got noticed came about because the two teenagers finally decided to unify their young love by giving up their virginities to each other. They made love, they enjoyed it, and then everything was well for a whole twenty-four hours afterwards. It seems that Angela had told her best friend about the event the night of. The best friend had told her boyfriend. The boyfriend, having been a Made Man to the Medicci Family, told Angela's father. And Angela's father told his best plumber (a.k.a. hitman) to take care of the problem. Not only was Franky "the Butcher", Angela's father, glad to have Tony killed as the punk who'd taken his little girl's innocence, but he knew it'd spark a full out war with the Pindaro's and he could wipe them out without any more problems.

It was the next night when the two young lovers were parked on some remote hilltop, making out with a vigor of teenage hormones, that the plumber struck. Perhaps the man was being stupid or perhaps he thought himself a better shot than he was, but either way, the rifle fired, the bullet hit it's target,...and then proceeded right through said target to punch a small, simple hole through the throat of the young woman who Tony was kissing. Somehow the bullet had missed his heart, but also had just struck Angela. Knowing what he did, the hitman ran like a scared little girl as he knew he was dead now, pretty much anywhere he went. Perhaps it was lucky for Tony that the man didn't stick around to finish the job...or perhaps it was a cruel, cruel thing to do, given what happened next.

Despite the shock of the bullet wound and the blood he was losing, the safety of the gasping girl he loved was of primary importance. Almost on autopilot he drove the car out of their like a bat out of hell, covering the mile to the Pindaro mansion in record time. But it wasn't enough. Even as he was climbing out of the car with the bleeding, gurgling girl in his arms, screaming in pain and rage combined, he knew that he wouldn't make it. The men came running out just as Tony collapsed to the ground and just as Angela was gasping out the last words of "I love you." That began the downwards spiral of Tony's first life and perhaps the beginnings of what would become his second life as Ash.

The war began a few days later. Franky blamed Tony for her death (rightly in a sense) and Tony's father decided to use it as an excuse to wipe out the Medicci Family before they could retaliate. As such, Tony dropped out of school within a day and became a Made Man within a week, and did so with an insane gladness borne of hatred and rage. Some complained that it was stupid to let a kid as young as him into the ranks, but after taking one look in his eyes, every single one of them backed down instantly, from young punk only a year or so older than him all the way to the elders of the Family who no one usually speaks up to. The fury burning within the young Wiseguy was an inhuman thing and everyone knew it could only be quenched in Medicci blood.

Two years. Two full years that war went on. The dead piled up on either side, with a definitely larger pile on the Medicci side. The police were bought off, along with the politicians, until even the city itself seemed at war at times, with the normal people just trying to ignore the things going on in the nastier neighborhoods and pretend their little city was still safe. Of course it _wasn't_ safe since absolutely no leave was given to either side. Heavy artillery, massacres, and car bombs were mild things in this all out war, and not even the Capo di Capo and his advisors dared to step in on it. And throughout that time, given that Tony was intimately involved, he hardened myself to the reality of it all. Killing became something he did only for survival, even if his vengeance still burned. Instead, it was focused on one man, Franky "The Butcher" Medicci. The man who he vowed he would kill himself, or die trying.

And, after two long and bloody years, he would be given my chance at that vengeance. Before the end of that two years though, Tony personally watched fifty men, at least, die, whether by his hand, by the hands of those in his Family, or worse, by the hands of the Medicci's. Those deaths meant nothing to him though...except for one: His cousin Vinny took a bullet in the head during one of the raids on a Medicci safehouse, and, though Tony mourned him, Vin went out as he would have wanted to, fighting and taking three or four with him to hell. After that Tony was only _more_ resolved to end all this, and the night that ended it all wasn't really all that far off.

It happened on December 25 of the year nineteen hundred and ninety-eight. Christmas. A day of compassion. A day of giving. A day of peace. Perhaps this was why Tony's father agreed to meet with Franky and the rest of his men to work out some kind of truce before the Medicci's got wiped out completely by this war. It all seemed innocent enough. But few things in life are _ever_ as innocent as they appear. The Pindaro's came in with more than enough people to take the few people they thought were left over from the Medicci Family. They found out the hard way to never make assumptions about the strength of an enemy.

It was a cold, windy night and the pier-side warehouse they were meeting in was like a freezer. But they stood there, twenty-five of them ready for action, and all paranoid as hell. It is possibly a good thing Tony was as paranoid as he was or he wouldn't be wandering anywhere right now. Given the Capo Franky's hatred of him, and Franky's knowledge of Tony's vow to kill him, it actually makes sense that the first shot fired was directed at the one who'd become Ash. It was lucky that Tony was already expecting someone to do just that and, thus, was moving by the time the shooter had it pointed at him. It was equally lucky that the Capo didn't seem to have been keeping up on his shooting lessons, since the tubby bastard missed the eighteen-year-old Wiseguy. (Barely admittedly, but he missed me all the same.) After that, the world erupted into screams, gun shots, and muzzle flashes. It had been a trap!

Tony watched as men around him fell, just as men on their side fell. Split seconds, no more, and then he was reacting to instincts that had been bred into him over two years of hell. Before he knew what was going on, he had his guns pulled and was killing any and all Medicci's he came across on way to his destination and self-acclaimed destiny. And that destination/destiny was none other than where he'd last seen Franky.

Coming through a wall of bodies, Tony's eyes were cursed with a sight which is still burned into his memory, years later. His father, with his guards all dead around him, his arms being held spread by two Medicci Wiseguys, and Franky "The Butcher" with a gun held to his head. The trigger was pulled, the hammer fell, and the bullet struck Tony's father's forehead and sent his brains through the back of his skull.

Now, while Tony's father and he weren't close, no true Italian, especially one raised in the Family, could truly stand a sight like that. All the pain, anger, and frustration of the past two years came rushing in all at once, and he felt something inside of him...give way.

And with that release came a release of Tony's powers. What he would come to call the Black seeped out of his skin for the first time, encasing him in it's pseudo-liquid form for the first time even as the world was tinged blue by the glow of his eyes. And as the Black formed the Armor instinctively, the remaining men, both Pindaro and Medicci, turned and stared in awe and fear.

Of course, scaring the hell out of a bunch of gun-toting Italian Wiseguy's isn't usually the quickest way to survive. As such, with screams of fear, all the men turned and began to fire. The bullets struck, the bullets stopped, the bullets were spit out of the Armor all without the newborn Ash feeling much. Instead, his focus was entirely on the fat form he could see fleeing the scene of carnage. The form belonging to Franky. As such, the newborn mutant began to rush forward towards the one he'd vowed to kill, only to be stopped by another, more furious barrage of bullets. Instincts that most humans don't even admit to having anymore kicked in and the killing began. When it was over seconds later, the remaining men all lay in bloody heaps, the disappearing ash of Tony's weapons falling to cover them briefly before disintegrating into nothingness. And, immediately after, Ash was rushing forward to try and overtake Franky.

The fat man was no match for the speed of an eighteen-year-old male in his prime, and, as such, was tackled quite quickly. Reveling in his newfound power, Ash made a grave mistake. He took the time to gloat instead of killing the man outright. Unfortunately, that was enough time for Franky to pull out the remote detonator he was planning to use to cover up the evidence of the massacre the trap should have caused.

The explosion did not kill Ash somehow, his Armor allowed him to survive the intense heat, and even the pressure, when he was blown upwards through the roof of the warehouse. Fate was with him once again as he arced out far enough to land in the ice-cold water, having become unconscious long before that. When he awoke minutes, later on the shore of the lake, to the sound of distant sirens and the slight warmth of the tower of flames that was once a warehouse, Ash first thanked every God and Goddess he could think of, then cursed the same beings for the pain that was coursing through his head and his half-numbed body. Rising out of the water, his instincts again cut in when he realized he was both naked and freezing. The Black seeped out of his skin to protect him against the cold. With that in effect, and his instincts crying for him to get out of there before the cops got in, the newborn Ash hobbled off to begin his new life.

The place which he hobbled off too was a Pindaro safehouse, which he collapsed in as soon as he could get inside and lock the door. Due to the exertion of his powers coming forth and all the pain that comes from using them too much, he slept for a good day or two straight. When he awoke, the final strands of his former life (and some might say his sanity) were severed. The reason for that is he turned on the television to try and find out whether it was safe to go back to the mansion and pick up his mother to get her out...only to discover that his mother, and all the rest of the Pindaro Family all over the city, was dead. Another rival Family had joined forces with the Medicci's to wipe them out completely. It was assumed, due to the extensiveness of the warehouse fire and the fact that Franky never contacted them afterward, that something had gone wrong and everyone had died in the fire. The police were all bought off to ignore some of the finer aspects of the whole event, thus leaving Tony (calling himself Ash now) only one alternative: to leave the city. Thus, some clothes were gathered, along with a stash of fake ID's and cash that every one of their safehouses had in it, and off Tony went, stealing a car to get him to the next city and then getting on a bus out of the state with one of the fake ID's.

That was three years ago and a lot has happened since really. For a long time he merely went from city to city, trying to put some distance between him and Detroit, but always getting himself in trouble when he'd either kill or severely hospitalize some ganger or rapist type, thus causing him to move on. After that, he spent another year or so wandering in hopes of finding answers to what he was rather than merely surviving. But that last year has been the one he's grown in the most. Mainly because it's been about a year since he came to the sudden realization that he was truly free for the first time in his life.

This freedom has led him from city to city, now not only to survive, not only to seek out information about what he is, but also to seek out new experiences. Some of these hedonistic experiences have been bad, like the brief touching upon various drugs, and some have been quite freeing in the sexual sense, but all of them share one thing in common. They are just his way of hiding from his pain and his past. Only recently has he begun to start thinking about what he is more than what new thing he can do (perhaps because he's rapidly running out of new experiences). As such, he's finally given into the urge to head up to NYC, despite the Family presence there. Coming into the city with nothing but the Harley he picked up in Nebraska and the pet ferret named Calamitus which is about the only living thing he really cares about other than himself, perhaps the one calling himself Ash will find the answers he seeks...or else just a lot more pain to add to the scrapbook.