Kaine Salinger

This sci-fi/dark future story uses a lot of 2000AD-esque genre conventions, aesthetics, story beats. One expects Judge Dredd to pop up at any moment.

This profile has all the S P O I L E R S.

Background

Advertisement

Powers and Abilities

Kaine Salinger excels in a number of fields. She’s:

• A superb crack-shot.
• A master hand-to-hand combatant.
• Extremely charismatic and an excellent speaker.
• Rather intelligent, and an adept and courageous leader.
• Particularly good-looking.

Having chosen the life as an Outcast, she’s also developed her criminal skills including stealth, lock-picking, jamming of security systems etc.

Mutant!

Additionally, she’s secretly a mutant with the power to drain the life-force out of anything she touches with her bare hands. If the victim was superpowered she also receives the same powers temporarily.

Her power is actually so strong that it is always active. This enables her resurrection even after her clinical death. She wears thick gloves to avoid accidentally touching, and thus killing anyone.

Advertisement

History

The story of the Outcasts takes place in the future dystopia named the Big City in the year of 2049. Looking at the architecture, tech level, social absurdity etc. the city could easily be a part of Mega-City One.

The Big City consists of many residential zones. Most of these are extremely poor -these areas are collectively named “the Net”. Some zones, like the Reagan Heights Enclave, are inhabited by the rich only.

The areas in-between the Net and the Enclaves are called the Semi-Enclaves. The small percentage of this multi-million city’s citizens that actually have works, live here. But the poor are getting even poorer while the Enclave citizens suck up all their remaining wealth.

The city itself is over 3000 square kilometers in size. The world is generally fascistic, and the only safe and good place to live is the enclaves themselves. The mayor of the city, is the secretly criminal man named ’Boss Angel‘.

As Outcasts starts, the government has launched ’mutant cleansing‘ campaigns. That basically means that every mutant is deported from the city permanently to penal colonies. In truth, they get dumped into the vacuum space as soon as possible to reduce costs.

Though these mass murders remain secret, this galvanizes mutant and non-mutant anti-Fascist resistance movements.

The mark of Kaine

One of the super-rich, living in the Reagan Heights Enclave, was a young woman named Kaine Salinger. Salinger was the daughter of the famous and influential Judge Salinger, and as such bore a very high status as an Enclave citizen.

However, Kaine found out that her deceased father had actually been killed by the criminal government. Judge Salinger been working on defending mutants. After this discovery, Kaine vowed to dedicate her entire life on fighting the city’s fascist forces and leadership.

Kaine Salinger was secretly a mutant herself. She had the power to drain the life-force from other individuals, and thus powering herself up.

Using the Enclaves’ powerful computer systems and her father’s old client archieves she sought out potential allies in this fight.

I’ll need a team

She reached her first member, a mutant working for the resistance, and called Shock, just when he was about to be executed by the security forces of the city. Kaine easily defeated the guards. Shock, whose girlfriend Blue had just been killed, readily joined her in her quest. His mutant electrical powers would come in handy…

The next member was a former star of the bloody sport of Bloodbowl, named B.D. Rickenbacker. This veteran had been fired due to illegal implants and was now unemployed. The increasingly psychopathic Rickenbacker was found by Salinger in a bar in the Net. He immediately and enthusiastically accepted joining her gang.

The fourth and last member of the team, which would be named the Outcasts, was a former space pilot named Yancy Queeg. Queeg had during one of his trips been cursed by a space witch, which made him immortal.

In constant pain, and unable to sleep, Queeg now only sought death. Unfortunately, his body would immediately heal any damage and and wounds he gained, and all attempts at suicide were doomed to fail. Kaine promised Queeg that she’d kill him once the job was done, and proved that she could do it. Queeg took the deal and joined.

Fly me to the Moon

The team’s headquarters would be Salinger’s own home, in the Enclaves. All of the member’s had their own specialities and expertise, and pooling their knowledge, they’d formulate some plans.

Queeg knew about the mutant killings in space, and this would become their first mission. The Outcasts hijacked a space-ship and Queeg piloted them to the Moon. B.D. identified the worker drones there as being manufactured by the Styron Corporation.

Thus the team returned to Earth to investigate the Styron Corporation’s archives, to find evidence of the mutant killings. However, the Outcast’s theft had not gone unnoticed. A pair of android henchmen named the Brothers Satan were sent to interrogate D.B.’s father about his whereabouts. Finding no answers, the Brothers killed the father.

After arriving at the Big City spaceport, the Outcasts were attacked by security forces. Although the Outcasts won this fight, they’d later all become identified by the guards.

I want a new drug

Salinger made a covert visit, in the guise of a prostitute, to Styron Corporation’s president Mr. Niedermeier. Niedermeier was thoroughly interrogated, and it was revealed that the killed mutants had been used for making the new miracle drug, named Immortalis.

Immortalis, as its’ name implies, actually stops one from aging. It even makes one younger. Finding this out, Salinger killed the old man Niedermeier in an act of vengeance.

Meanwhile, when B.D. found out about the killing of his father, he went berserk. He actually managed to track down the Satan Brothers themselves, and engaged them in a vicious fight. After a while, Shock and Queeg also arrived, joining the fray.

Rickenbacker managed to destroy one of the brothers, but Shock was almost killed. Queeg actually was killed, but soon resurrected again… and destroyed the other brother in his turn.

Salinger now had proof, in the form of documents and photographs, and she knew the motives and modus operandi. In an desperate act, she went to the TV studios, and forcing herself into a live broadcast. There, during the ’Freak Show‘ she held a speech for the citizens of the Big City, but after a while was attacked by security forces.

She managed to finish the broadcast, but was mortally wounded.

Can’t keep a good girl down

Meanwhile, D.B. and Queeg saw that broadcast. They hurried to the studios, and eventually found Kaine Salinger’s dead body. Queeg, enraged since Salinger could no longer hold her promise, grabbed her. Kaine’s powers were, surprisingly, still active. Thus Queeg was emptied on his entire life-force.

His body fell apart and he seemingly died. The only thing left was a zombie-like head.

This life-force transfer resurrected Kaine, but she was left extremely weak. The team left for their HQ, and D.B. took the zombie head  Further killings at the Styron Corporation were also reported by the media at that time.

D.B. Rickenbacker realized that they needed more manpower. He thus contacted his old Bloodbowl teammates Killer and Professor W.R. Watson.

Kaine Salinger had given up on her fight already. Yet Rickenbacker, Killer and the Prof, plus de zombie head, went after Boss Angel himself. Capturing him at the ’Suicide Park‘ they took him back to Salinger.

Boss fight won

Boss Angel revealed that the mutant killing plan had been formulated by the sapient  computer Orcom. While that interrogation took place, Orcom killed the entire government of Big City to take over. The Outcasts were tracked down by a new pair of Satan Brothers, and the Prof was killed in the ensuing fight.

The rest of the Outcasts were defeated, and captured by security forces. As they were interrogated, Orcom soon gloated about his plans to them. Using his electrical powers, Shock managed in destroying the life-support systems of Orcom… though the charge made his head explode.

Kaine then absorbed Orcom’s entire organic life-force and destroyed the two brothers Satan using new powers. With Boss Angel being set straight, Salinger had actually succeeded in her quest to rid Big City of the fascistic rule.

Yancy Queeg was granted his wish to die by Salinger, who absorbed the last of his life-force. D.B. Rickenbacker and Killer went on the celebrate in the Net, along Queeg’s head, whom they were uncertain of whether or not he was dead. Salinger herself could finally retire to the Enclaves in peace.

Big City was about to change…

Description

Kaine Salinger is a slenderly built, attractive woman. Her confident, upper class demeanour means that she’s always addressed “Lady”.

Her short grey hair is combed back. It evokes Amazo’s classic costume head piece, or Wolverine’s hair (without the ’horns’). Her eyes bear an intense and focused look.

She often wears full body suits in dark leather (purple or black) along high leather boots, high leather gloves and a leather belt with the letter ’K‘. Occasionally, depending on the mission and if she needs to blend in with the general populace of the Net, she wears a tunic, robe or similar.

Despite her rather rough clothing, she gives an elegant and tidy appearance.

Personality

Kaine lived a good life, in the rich Enclaves, up until the death of his father.

Her mutant death touch causes her great grief. She always feels guilty after draining somebody’s life. Since she has to use this ability in order to survive, she attempts to make it as comfortable as possible with willing victims. Such people are paid large sums, and left alive — albeit very aged — after Salinger fed off them.

Leading the Outcasts meant having an acceptable use for her power. It also meant that she no longer have to hide in her own, with robot servants and her father as her sole company.

At heart, she’s an embittered idealist. But she remains compassionate, and feels a need to free the Net’s rabble from the grip of Fascism. Though she’s filthy rich she sees herself as a fellow outcast due to her conditions. She’ll go as far as walking Net streets without bodyguards, something Enclaves people never do.

It’s clear from her attire that she’s an enclaver. Yet in the case of trouble, she usually physically defeats her opponents in mere seconds.

The rest of the Outcasts were apparently her friends as well as colleagues. Although a good strategist and being a person who gets things done, she’s a tendency to give up her goals a little too easily.

Quotes

“Try to break me !”

DC Universe History

Salinger and the Outcasts fit will within the boundaries of the world of Judge Dredd and Judge Anderson.

In the DC Universe they have no real position of equivalent. But if the Outcasts’ world is in the DC Universe’s future, they might be descendants from various well-known DC characters.

For example, D.B. Rickenbacker might be a descendant of Victor Stone alias Cyborg (following the cyborg traditions) and Yancy Queeg the descendant of Pariah (born normal, but easily cursed into eternal life).

By Dr. Peter S Piispanen.

Source of Character: Outcasts series by Grant and Wagner, DC Comics.