Blackhawk
Carlos runs Ramirez Restorations Ltd, a moderately successful auto repair and restoration business in Calaverada, with three locations. He is married to Maria; she is an accountant who operates a modest business from the Ramirez home as well as being the CFO of Ramirez Restorations. They have four children. Rico is the eldest at 22, a troubled and directionless young man who was sent off to military school at 12 and has only recently returned to the area. Lorena is 17. She is a prodigy already enrolled in the engineering program at Copernicus University. Rodrigo is 15 and has inherited his mother’s love of math. Enzo is 13, and very sports-oriented.
Angel Castenada is Carlos’ cousin. Outwardly a wealthy real estate developer, it is an open secret that he also runs the Castenada crime family. He is also Rapier, a supercriminal known for his electrosword that electrocutes as well as slashes.
Rico was in trouble from the day he was born, it seems. Unlike any of his family, he was highly aggressive and needed an outlet for that. He had to move schools twice because of fighting incidents. Despite a loving family and a stable home environment, he was a petty criminal and gang member (the Crimson Claws) from the time he was 10. When he started stealing cars, though, his family finally put their foot down and sent him to a highly-touted military school.
Unfortunately for them, the Siegestone Academy for Boys, located in the remote wilds of upper Michigan, is actually a criminal training and recruitment base providing minions to various criminal groups and supervillains. From the age of 12 to 18, Rico was rigorously trained in various forms of combat and infiltration in the brutal prison-like environment. The school had the opposite of its intended effect of tempering him into a hardened criminal: he saw what a little shit he was and determined to change. He began to formulate escape plans, but Siegestone had years of experience in boys who try to defy them; his plans repeatedly failed and he learned to lay low. Finally, he was on the cusp of ‘graduating’, and was allowed out with groups to go on real-world training missions, heists, and raids. During one of these, he alerted Chicago superhero Redhawk to his plight.
Redhawk investigated, was captured, Rico helped him escape, and Redhawk dismantled the school. Redhawk also took the young man under his wing, and Rico became Bluejay, his sidekick.
As Bluejay, he was occasionally in the field but he was mainly a researcher, backup, and lookout for Redhawk. Redhawk continued to train him in hand-to-hand combat and various other crimefighting skills. He also channeled the boy’s aggression into self-improvement and discipline. He supplemented the Academy’s brutal and practical fighting style with Kyokushin school techniques and philosophy.
Rico was an adult after the dissolution of the school, and he opted not to return to his family except for Christmas and Thanksgiving. He told them he had a good job doing training in Chicago, and he planned to remain there for a time. He was also under investigation and observation by Federal authorities, since he’d been an advanced member of the Academy – they wanted to make sure he was not a supercriminal in the making – and he did not want to burden his family with that.
When Angel Castenada’s men tried to recruit his two younger brothers, though, he knew he had to return to Century Station. He retired as Bluejay at 20 and moved back to the area. Through a recommendation from Redhawk, he was recruited by ARC:US as an ‘analyst’. Because he wanted to spare his family from reprisals by Castenada, he kept a secret identity when he created his Blackhawk costume and identity. He has tentatively reconciled with his family, but his relationship with both his father and mother is cool and distant. His father is very disappointed that he won’t be taking over the family business. His siblings are much more accepting when he visits, though, and sometimes he ‘babysits’ his younger brothers when his parents need a night out and his sister cannot.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:15, Wed 18 Oct 2023.