Cliff's Notes
Growing up in 'the system' and bouncing from foster home to foster home, with orphanage visits in between, Richard didn't exactly have the happiest of childhoods. The knowledge that his parents died in the midst of a drug raid on their house helped neither his chances of being adopted or his own attitude towards authority figures or the world in general. A bit of a chip was carried on his shoulder, seeds of bitterness sown deep even at an early age.
Once he was out on the streets, he took to the underworld like a duck on water—burglary, grand theft auto, all the non-violent crimes you could shake a stick at. Not one for gangs or organized crime, he worked alone, and naturally he suffered the fate of most amateur criminals without anyone to watch their back… he went to jail.
Four years in jail - picking up more tips, more contacts, and more criminal talents - ended when his ability manifested during a conflict with another prisoner, a gang leader named Cortez - who he killed, before slipping out of jail. He didn't know why he could do what he could do, or why, never once thinking that there were others like him. No explanation suited him, so he just didn't think about it. He went back to his old tricks, with some -new- tricks that no other burglar could match, building up a fairly impressive reputation as the one that the cops couldn't catch. Chances are, if he'd kept up at it, the Company would've caught up to him sooner or later.
Then the nuclear devastation that struck New York City, shaking even street scum like him down to the core, and Nathan Petrelli revealed the existence of the Evolved. For the first time he knew he wasn't alone… though he stayed in the shadows, and watched, until now.
The Full Version
Birth and Fosterage
The life of Richard Cardinal began in blood; his father killed during a drug raid gone bad - no cop, David Cardinal was on the wrong end of the raid - and his mother dying in childbirth when the stress of the raid and the gunshots triggered premature labor. A parentless infant whose extended family was essentially uncaring of his very existence, much less his parents' deaths, he was immediately shuffled into Child Services as soon as the hospital was finished tending to the premature newborn's needs and he was healthy enough to be moved.
A lot of newborns, brought into the care of the state and the adoption service, are swiftly snatched up by parents wanting babies— but in Richard's case, the stigma of a 'crack baby' kept him from adoption, and with the span of years he landed himself in one of the delightful orphanages scattered throughout the NYC area. Weaned on the knowledge that nobody wanted him, and the undeserved belief by the adults that there'd be something 'wrong' with him due to his birth, bitterness took seed deep in the boy's heart at an early age.
Although the supervisors and teachers and nuns at the orphanage had a very poor view of Richard due to his tendency to brood and defy authority, he was actually fairly popular with the other children—not because he was friendly or socialized with them, but because whenever he saw one of them about to get punished he'd make certain to push his own behavior just enough over the top to divert attention to himself. From his point of view… they were all in the same boat, that boat sucked, and while he might not like the other kids, he could certainly take punishment better than that bunch of crybabies. He went through foster home after foster home, discovering that quite a few of them were just taking on kids for the extra tax deductable and money, rather than to love them, and rarely gave the legitimate foster families a chance to prove otherwise. He picked up more from the private schooling they gave the kids than the adults probably thought he did - assuming he was mentally deficient, he was actually quite a bright young man. An obstinent child to the end, he spent most of his time at the orphanage until he was old enough to leave on his own. Which he did, gladly, hitting the streets with access to his parents' funds at last - what little wasn't seized as 'drug money' by the government - to start a life on his own. An apartment in the bad part of town was bought, and he picked up a crap job working at the local grocery store as a stocker.
Crime and Punishment
If anyone's surprised that he turned to crime shortly thereafter, they should look into buying a bridge in Brooklyn.
Not one for the ski-masks and pistols convenience store robberies, Richard turned to what he considered less crude crimes; learning to hot-wire from some friends, he took to picking up cars off the street, keeping an eye on people nearby he did some breaking and entering. He was an amateur—and so it's really a surprise that it took two more years of this before he got taken down by the local police. Just over the underage limit, and unable to afford a particularly good lawyer, it wasn't to juvenile with him - it was straight off to jail on a six year sentence.
The old adage is true. Jails don't reform amateur criminals. They just teach them to be better criminals. An angry, bitter young man became an angry, bitter young man with hardened jail-birds to give him pointers and plenty of time to exercise and get himself into shape - including the occasional prison fight to keep his reflexes sharp and teach him how to defend himself. He served half his term before his luck ran out, and he made an enemy of a particularly powerful gang leader behind bars in the same prison. Cortez told him that he was gonna die for an inadvertent insult, and he believed it; he'd seen the influence that certain people could hold in the jail before. That night, sitting in the dark in his cell, he wished he could get through those bars and do something about it, frustration born of helplessness building alongside the fear of his impending execution. He struck the bars…
…and the dark came up to meet him, flesh and bone bleeding away to shadow that spilled through the bars to a patch across the floor. Panic, and then he was whole again, staring back at the bars as he heard a guard coming. Panic—and shadow, once more, rather than flesh, watching from the cell block's shadows as part of them as the guard walked by without noticing. Just what had happened, he wasn't certain about, but he knew this was his only chance to survive the night.
He wondered, in the morning, if it was some kind of dream. But the news swiftly spread throughout the cell block that someone'd killed Cortez in his sleep, in his cell, and there wasn't a whit of evidence as to who, or how. That night, he tried again—it was harder, without that adrenaline and fear pumping through his veins, but he managed to become shadow once more. He didn't know what had happened to him, what he was, but he knew this was his way out. He wasn't spending another three years behind bars. And nobody could stop him from simply walking out, not anymore.
In the Shadows
On the lam, and on the streets, Richard didn't know what to think about what he'd become. Maybe he really was a demon, like Sister Nancy had called him all those times. Or maybe something closer to the comics the kids used to read late at night with flashlights in their beds, hoping they didn't get caught. But no Satan appeared to claim his soul, no Professor X in his wheelchair called him to some hokey school, and no Hagrid showed up to declare he was a wizard. Besides, he was in his mid-twenties at this point - who believed in that sort of thing? In the end, he decided not to think about it at all, but just to accept it. And all the possibilities that came with it.
A cat burglar who can turn into living shadow, it turns out, can make quite a pretty penny on the black market, especially with the contacts he'd made while in prison - even if he can only steal small, easily portable items. The next few years saw him building up a hefty stockpile of cash and belongings, and setting up a secure little bolt-hole inaccessible by foot. Despite his criminal tendencies, though, and the occasional brawl or drunken fight, Cortez remained his only 'kill' - no serial killer or assassin, despite having the talents to pull it off easily if he so chose. Of course, he became overconfident, assured of his invulnerability. There's little doubt that his antics were videotaped by security more than once, however, and given time it seems inevitable than the Company would come after him. November 8th changed all of that.
No Longer Alone
'The Bomb' fortunately didn't demolish the part of the city that Richard was living in, but it certainly got his attention. At first joining in with the looters, the cries for help he heard from the ruins of one building struck at his conscience too strongly for him to ignore. As a shadow, he could creep through the cracks, and he joined in to aid the rescue workers by pointing out where to look for survivors in the damaged areas that weren't suffused with radiation—a few might have spotted the shadow-that-became-a-man, but in the chaos of the night neither he nor the people trying to save as many as they could really paid much attention. Then he laid low, as uncertain and afraid as most of the world, until Senator Petrelli's revelation showed him for the first time that he was not alone in the world.
A wanted man, registration was entirely out of the picture for him; he'd have been arrested on the spot, and who knows what measures they could've taken to prevent him from slipping away as a shadow? The witch hunts and persecution further convinced him to keep out of sight even more-so than before, with only the occasional bit of 'work' to keep him in liquid funds in a city that increasingly could barely afford to even pay for itself. The world seemed to be in a state of flux, and he bided his time, and watched, and waited. The take-down of PARIAH proved to him that he'd taken the correct choice in keeping a low profile, as much as he might have sympathized with their ideals, but the increasing violence and confusion has made him start to wonder if he's going to have to choose a side… before it gets chosen for him.