Burning Liberty

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In 1929 the stock market crashed. They called it Black Monday, but for those there, they remember it started on Thursday, October 4th. The following Monday and Tuesday are the days that put the nails in the coffin. Funny how history forgets the details sometimes.

So just like that the United States, the Great Giant that had been steering the fate of the free world hit a rut in the road, and a whole lot of people were thrown from the party wagon and landed in a ditch. For many, the ride was over.

It was a desperate period in the nation's history, causing desperate men to take desperate measures. Causing desperate men to do things... dark terrible things. Things that could not long go unpunished. Against all odds heroes rose from the crowd in an attempt to turn the tidal swell of the oncoming darkness. Though times were tough all over, some men became even tougher. One of those men was named John Darrington.

John was born nearing the turn of the century, in 1896 to unremarkable parents in the sticks of rural Virginia. John was an above average athlete with a mind as sharp as a razor and a taste for adventure. In 1917, when he was 21, the United States entered into the Great War and despite the tearful objections of his fiancée Lucy, John made certain that he was on the front lines of the conflict. John learned everything he needed to know about combat in the two years that followed.

Upon his return home he married Lucy, the love of his life, and the two of them moved to Washington D.C. To start their lives together, but something had changed within him. He became hardened. A man on a mission. He had seen enough bloodshed and despair for a hundred lifetimes. In December of 1921 when Lucy told John she was a month pregnant he knew that somehow he needed to provide his family with a light to protect them from the darkness that men were capable of. He knew that something had to be done...and although it would take time, he knew just how to do it.

During his time abroad John had saved the life of a scientist who was on the run... Professor Albrecht Neumann. Neumann was a strange fellow, but he was indebted to the young Darrington. He favored him greatly with rations and assistance when he could, and the two became fast friends in the backdrop of the war ravaged Europe.

During this time Neumann let John in on an amazing secret. Neumann confided that he was the lead developer of a team of scientists that had been commissioned to work on a very special device. A perpetual motion device that could produce an unlimited supply of energy. While that research proved fruitless, another discovery was made... a discovery that had cost the rest of the researchers their lives. A device that could generate a force field which projected heat using only kinetic energy as a power source. A device that would revolutionize the world.

John was rightfully skeptical, but the professor demonstrated. Strapping the field generator onto a crudely made harness and donning a cloak made of a special protective material he called Omni-Weave, Neumann held his fist high, switched on the power and a soft glow of flame enveloped his hand without so much as a scorch mark.

The professor made John promise that if anything ever happened to him, that the young Darrington would keep the breakthroughs out of the hands of those that were after him. Those that had dispatched the other researchers, and would use this newfound device to undoubtedly seek ultimate power. John agreed.

The next time he saw the professor he was breathing though a hole in his neck cause by an assassins bullet. John kept his word, and before Neumann's assailant could summon assistance, John dispatched him and made off into the night with the professors amazing inventions and research notes.

In 1922, on the 4th of July, Liberty Darrington was born. Her mother Lucy did not survive childbirth.

During the years that followed John became more obsessed with protecting his daughter and fulfilling his promise to make the world a safer place for her and everyone else to live in. He studied from every cop, private detective, and investigative reporter that would talk to him. His analytical mind made him a natural. He also learned anything he could about different fighting skills until he had mastered everything that anyone would teach him. John had remade himself into an ace private investigator in the period of just 7 short years, but he didn't stop there.

In 1929, when the market crashed, with the United States teetering on the brink of uncertainty and his little Libby only 7 years old, John was ready. He strapped on a modified version of the Kinetic-Combustor Field Generator and donning a special scarlet trench coat, mask and fedora, John Darrington became another of those small details that history forgets, but the name of the mystery man that he became, the Fiery-Fisted Fury of Burning Freedom... that legacy would withstand the test of time.

In early 1942, John Darrington left home a second time to fight a war overseas. This time to the tears of his 19 year old daughter Libby who tried desperately to convince him that a 46 year old mystery-man had no place traveling half-way around the world to battle the forces of the Axis.

Libby had know her father was Burning Freedom before she found out the truth about Santa Claus. She had been there with him every step of the way, and though he had forbid her involvement in his activities at first, John eventually came to train Liberty with every skill he knew. She also learned everything that she could from the masked associates of Burning Freedom, who took her under their wing as if she were their very own flesh and blood.

Despite Liberty's pleas, John left and joined the Allied forces in their mission until he returned home in 1945 to find that Liberty had taken up the slack in his investigation business in his absence. For the next year they fought crime alongside one another, Liberty in her official investigator capacity and Burning Freedom, her silent partner, the mighty masked muscle. Then tragedy struck. In 1946 Nemesis' forces successfully occupied Washington DC and took the nation hostage with caches of nerve gas planted in several large cities. The plot was narrowly foiled by the combined efforts of many of America's greatest heroes.

The lives of many masked men and women were lost during the Nemesis conflict, and the 50 year old Burning Freedom was seriously wounded in the battle as he personally overloaded his Kinetic-Combustor Field Generator to create a heat field large enough to envelope and burn away the premature release of the Nemesis nerve toxin directed specifically at the then in hiding president, Harry S. Truman and key members of the faltering government.

While Truman and countless civilians caught in the midst of the conflict were safe, Freedom's career was over in a literal flash. With scars and a U.S. Medal of Honor to show for his trouble, he returned home to Liberty, who had already set her mind on carrying on with the “family business”.

In 1946, at 24 years old, Libby first donned a modified version of her father's Omni-Weave costume, an upgraded version of the Kinetic-Combustor Field Generator, and Burning Liberty began shining her light into the dark corners where evil dwelled.

With the support of her father and his masked associates, Liberty's name soon struck the hearts of the underworld with nearly as much fear as did the name of Burning Freedom. John Darrington passed away on September 20th, 1948 at the age of 52 years old of complications associated with his injuries sustained during the Nemesis event. Darrington was buried in Arlington National Cemetery and was the first known soldier in the United States to receive the honor of having their graveside marked with a commemorative eternal flame, to immortalize his life, his achievements, and what he stood for.

Liberty continued to fight crime herself, rivaling even her father's legacy, continually pushing herself harder and farther, as she felt she had large shoes to fill. Coming into conflict time and again with rising criminal mastermind Professor Horror, Liberty had no idea that this foe would inadvertently alter her life.

While following up on a lead of a potential sale of a weapons grade hallucinogen from an underground smuggling ring, Liberty stumbled onto the hidden lair of Professor Horror. Their battle was intense, but short lived as Horror opted to attempt escape through a prototype teleportation device rather than suffer defeat at the hands of his enemy.

Liberty followed Horror into the device, not actually knowing what she was following him into. As the teleporter struggled to compensate for two life forms entering the matrix, the power cells overloaded and the matter transportation beams carrying the signals for Liberty and Horror were sent aimlessly into space.

In 1997, due to the complex and repetative opening of portals between the Rikti dimesion and our own, the matter teleporter signals for both Horror and Liberty were both locked and re-directed once again toward Earth.

Although Liberty was only moments behind Horror when she entered the teleporter, on a cosmic scale the time to space difference was immense. His beam arrived back on Earth to reassemble him approximately 5 years before Liberty's.

Currently Liberty is unaware that Horror is alive, but he is very aware of her and makes every attempt to monitor her actions. Where this conflict will end has yet to be seen.