Vincent was born with your typical wage slave for a father, and a stay-at-home mother who always seemed like she might bolt the first chance she got. It isn't that his mother disliked his father, surely she loved him in her way, but there always seemed to be something calling her away. When he was a kid, Vincent would pretend his mother was the daughter of a Mafia Don and secretly wealthy. When he was 10, his mother went shopping and didn't return that night. Nor the next. On the third night there was a knock at the door and when his father opened it the portal was eclipsed by a large troll of African decent. Vincent could not hear what was said, but his father broke down and fell to the floor weeping. He had never seen his father cry, not even the few times his father and his mother fought. The troll left that night, and Vincent's father sat him down to explain that his mother would not be coming back, ever, but could not tell him why.
One year later was when his magic began to show itself, and his father took him to see his Uncle Lou. The trip was exciting for Vincent, they got to travel all the way to Seattle. Uncle Lou turned out to be the troll that he had seen that night outside their apartment. That weekend, Caper learned a little about Magic, and it was decided that he would finish school while learning from Uncle Lou. Caper learned the ins and outs of the Talismonger's shop, though never really took much interest in the merchandise. The summoning materials always seemed to make him sneaze and itch, which is why it was a while before they discovered that Caper had difficulty working with Spirits at all. Caper never thought much of the occassional special client Uncle Lou brought into the back room. Caper wasn't allowed in there. This, of course, led him to the task of trying to discover how to get into the room. It must have been coincidence, then, that on his sixteenth birthday he found the door unlocked.
The room appeared to be pretty mundane actually, except for the wardrobes and cabinets lining the walls. There were two semicircular counches around a small low table. It looked kind of like a sitting room, except that it seemed overly protected to his Astral Sight. As Vincent snooped in the room, he heard Uncle Lou approaching with one of his special clients. Quickly, he closed the door and locked it, before hiding inside one of the many cabinets in the room. Uncle Lou unlocked the door and entered with a slender elf girl and a burly looking human man. As they began to speak, Vincent realized that they were speaking of his mother. Uncle Lou and the other man kept arguing that he should not know, that his mother wouldn't have wanted that life even touching his own. The elf countered that every child should know the fate of their mothers, she seemed a bit sad with these words.He accent was a bit strange, and Vincent couldn't place the dialect. The human man said something about not knowing for sure that it was the Johnson that killed her.
At just that moment, Vincent touched something in the wardrobe, all he remembered after that was pain shooting up his arm and that he must of called out because the door was yanked open and he faced the three in the room, all had weapons drawn. A look of alarm was replaced by a look of realization on two of the faces, and a look of utter fear on Uncle Lou's face. Then, everything went white and then black.
Vincent woke up in the hospital to a nurse explaining to Uncle Lou in the hallway that the antivenom had been administered in time and a Lonestar officer asking just where I had run into such a venomous, and illegal, animal. The window was open as well, and Vincent was impulsive in his youth, angry that his "Uncle" had kept the details of his mother's death from him, and afraid that he might have made Uncle Lou mad either by bringing the cops into it or by intruding into his private sanctum. Forget the fact that he was in a hospital gown far from the ground floor, Vincent pulled the ivs and other things from his body and ran to the window, leaping out as he cast the levitate spell to lower him safely to the ground. He could hear Uncle Lou calling after him as his feet touched the ground, and he just ran.
Over the next few weeks he avoided the cops, and places he thought Uncle Lou might look for him. That's how he met her, Saint `Nessa. The most beautiful girl he had seen, even if she had neopaint all over her face and her hair dyed in three different colors. She helped him escape from a Lonestar drone, at least that was the excuse. Later that day she took him to her friends, and that is how he got involved in the gang. Saint `Nessa, who he would later learn was really Vanessa StCharles, told the big Ork boy that his name was Caper. Caper learned the Ork, named Rusty, was the leader of the gang, which called themselves the Unwanteds. Over the next four years, Caper commited crimes with the gang, and even used his magic to fight for their turf. Mostly it was petty vandalism and even some grand theft. He only got caught once, but then he was in the system. He was afraid Uncle Lou might find him, but Rusty assured him that Clickit would be able to swap his real records with someone else. Two months later, the Sewer Dragons pushed into their turf and fighting broke out. Caper ended up killing a guy with his magic. Sure, the guy was shooting at him at the time, but to Caper, it just seemed a little too much. He didn't really understand why, but suddenly he was homesick. He told `Nessa, who was his girl, and she promised to help him leave.
Of course, when they went to Rusty he was irate. He began to beat `Nessa, and of course Caper intervened. Unbeknownst to Caper, there was some internal struggle going on in the upper eschelons of the gang and one of the older boys decided to make a move to get rid of Rusty at that moment, he figured that Caper and `Nessa were backing his play. In the end, he was hospitalized and then arrested on a murder charge. Rusty took about 8 other people and left to make their own gang, and `Nessa took charge of the Unwanteds. Rusty swore to one day find Caper and kill him. `Nessa kissed him goodbye and told him to leave while he could, but that she couldn't leave the younger kids.
And so, Caper stood at the door to Uncle Lou's Talismans and Things and stared at the foot of the door until Uncle Lou came out to shoo him away for loitering. It took Uncle Lou a moment to see through all the paint and hair dye, but in only a moment he swept Caper into his arms and almost killed him with the hug before he pulled him inside and began to fuss all over him.
Of course, Uncle Lou didn't approve of the gang colors and new scars but otherwise it was as if Caper had never left. Ok, so almost. After the initial reunion was over, Uncle Lou set Caper down and told him the story of his mother. She had been a Shadowrunner and good friend of his. Ok so, yeah Uncle Lou had a thing for her, but a Troll and a Dwarf? He never held any illusions that she felt the same for him. For 6 years his mother ran in the shadows, before meeting Caper's father. When she found out she was pregnant she quit, right in the middle of a run too, which her team understood. It wasn't a dangerous run anyway, just a little B&E and swiping some paydata. They finished the run, but when they went to meet with the Johnson for their final payout, he seemed overly concerned that Caper's mother had left. Ten years later, Uncle Lou learned from two of his mother's old team that the rest of the team had been killed, including his mother. At first they didn't suspect the Johnson from years ago, but then the elf, whose name was Laura, found a security feed of his mother meeting a man that looked vaguely familiar. It was shot the night she turned up dead. They have been trying to track the man down since, but as of yet there had been no luck.
It was this that would eventually lead Caper to decide that he was going to take up his mother's old business, and he would start by becomming a Shadowrunner. He told Uncle Lou of his decision a few weeks later. Uncle Lou just sighed sadly, and gave Caper a bundle of stuff. "Your mom's stuff" was all he said before going back to stocking the shelves.
