Robert Boxer was born Vladimir Ryabov in east Moscow, Soviet Russia, August 27, 1961. His family was lower-middle class – not necessarily poor, but not located in the best of neighborhoods, and facing the same stresses and issues as most everyone else in the USSR at the time. That's not to say things were terrible. They could have been much worse, in the big scheme of things. His parents had steady work. He and his younger brother went to school. Money was always tight, but they had a roof over their heads and food to eat, so long as they planned ahead and kept an eye on the market.
Prone to distraction and detachment in the classroom, Vlad excelled in athletics but never quite measured up to his brother's scholastic achievements. It wasn't necessarily that he was stupid. More that there were other things going on that he was more interested in, particularly as he got older and became aware of money changing hands under tables within the confines of his own neighborhood. Work was fine – he had no real issue with the idea of hard labor – but there was an odd, exciting appeal to evasion of such an organized, omnipresent and oppressive rule that catered to his frustration with the stagnant monotony of his family's life and drew him in at an early age. He was moving illicit goods around off the books for his Connected uncle before he graduated high school.
His botch of the college entrance exams was half intentional and half sheer lack of book smarts. Either way it meant he needed to find a legitimate job, and he did. He was hired on as a maintenance worker at a local office building, which put him in an ideal position to cheerfully pilfer small parts and broken refuse as simple as burned out light bulbs for resale by his more business-minded friends in the mafia. At the same time, his smiling loyalty to the idea of undermining the system and physical prowess made him an ideal candidate for more basic forms of thuggery, which he took to with enthusiasm.
Several years went by without tremendous change. Conditions in the Soviet Union were getting worse, more people were turning to illicit dealing to acquire basic amenities, and crime was profitable. There was room for advancement within the organization, particularly given his increasingly long and relatively flawless service record, but he preferred the faster paced face-to-face challenge of physical altercations and moving cargo to political maneuvering and manipulation. He evaded imprisonment largely by virtue of the right strings being pulled on the right puppets by people operating over his head, but as time passed and it became increasingly clear that the USSR was in its death throes his uncle decided that a transition was in order. They made the move in 1988. Better to deal in an environment with some established political stability and sturdy connections than have to wade through the mess inherent in a regime change.
To America! Land of opportunity, and more specifically, land of an established Brighton Beach sect of the Izmaylovskaya gang he was a working part of. Vladimir was more enthusiastic about the move than he might care to admit to his colleagues. What few movies he had managed to see intrigued him. Lots of shiny white teeth and things exploding. Hooray! Business in Brooklyn was made easier by the pre-existing connections of his employers. His duties were not much different than they were back home. Offloading merchandise, driving it from point A to point B, looking intimating, and kicking the shit out of people he was told deserved it. He didn't think they always did, truthfully. His superiors tended to assume he was stupider than he was. Fair enough, as he never made much of an effort to persuade them otherwise. So long as they kept him busy, he was happy.
His first arrest was in 1992 – one year after he successfully became a US Citizen and had his name legally changed to Robert Boxer, which he felt was more American-sounding. The last name was suggested by his uncle. He didn't ask why, but assumed it must have something to do with his proficiency in the area of beating people about the head. He was offered a deal, as those suspected to be connected often are, but declined to take it. He took one that didn't require him to squeal instead, plead guilty, and spent the next four years in prison for armed robbery and assault.
Upon his release on parole in 1996, he found that he didn't fit in quite as well as he used to. Something about him was off. He returned to his old position and took on his old duties immediately, but his performance faltered. He felt strange. Particularly around the shittier parts of town. On the street late at night, like he was being followed or pursued. Sometimes it was just a passing brush against his perception, like he thought he heard something. Sometimes it was sharper, more pressing, harder to avoid. Sometimes it was just weird. Paranoia accompanied by hunger, a smell, a flicker of movement that it was like he wasn't actually seeing.
It only took him four months to get caught violating his parole, probably owing to the distraction. He went back to prison for another four years to finish out his sentence, with another few months tacked on for resisting arrest.
As soon as he was released, the sensation returned. He was forty years old, but in good enough shape to be welcomed back with open arms, potential psychological breakdown aside. Unfortunately, this time, the weirdness in his head didn't stay on the streets. It followed him into his apartment.
His first week out, he was woken up three late nights in a row by something he couldn't define, and couldn't get back to sleep again once it started. A search around the apartment with a baseball bat the first night revealed nothing. No one was there, contrary to everything his insides seemed to be trying to tell him. The second and third nights were even worse. By the time he woke up halfway through night #4, he'd about reached the end of his rope. Bat in one hand, flashlight in the other, he crept from room to room and found nothing at all until he reached the kitchen. Tiny claws scrabbling over tile skittered ahead of his approach, and a swing of the flashlight beam caught on a flicker of fuzzy tail skirting under the fridge.
Inexplicable fear shocked up through his spine, followed by more level-headed disgust. All that fuss over a fucking mouse. His hands were shaking, breathing quick, still afraid for no reason at all. Small furry animals: not high up on his list of secret fears. He got along with them pretty well, all in all. Attributing the sensation to lack of sleep, he dropped down to all fours, crouched down, and caught the glassy gleam of the little bastard's beady eyes peering back at him from under the fridge.
One retrieved bb gun later, he was back, flat on the floor like an idiot trying to aim a flashlight and the long gun under the fridge at beady eyes without hitting anything that might damage the refrigerator in the process. Finally: pop!
It was like someone hit him in the face with a sledgehammer. Pain so intense he couldn't breathe or see. He rolled away from the fridge, blacked out. Woke up again half a day later and was still miserable. But that night, the creeping feeling was gone. He'd felt what the mouse felt, and the mouse was no longer extant enough to feel. It was not a sane connection to make, but the evidence was there.
A trip to a local pet store served as reasonably deliberate confirmation. The presence of something else was there on the edge of his mind before he even made it through the door. When he crouched down to squint into the lowest glass tank, half a dozen little rat heads turned to peer intently back at him, whiskers twitching. When he straightened up again, they went back about their business.
He bought two. Rambo and John McClaine.
In time, he began to understand it, as well as it could be understood. Think the right way, use the right amount of emphasis, and he could make them do things. Come, go, see, listen. Organized perception on his part took concentration, but seemed possible, with work. There was probably room to use it to his advantage, but he never really did. The mob life was finally beginning to lose its appeal. Those aware of his paranoid complaints and apparent delusions looked at him funny. The work he was getting was lower key. They trusted him less. Unbeknown to him, plans were in the works to off not long after he was out. There were rumors about him talking to the city rats like they were people. Rumors that he was losing it.
He was, a little.
But the rodent connection saved his life. He was called out for a meeting late one night, eleven o'clock sharp, only to arrive early find no one there. As he tracked his way from one end of the designated alley to the other, pausing long enough to mutter at the rats milling around a dumpster at its middle, they, rather than he, became aware of someone else on the approach. Someone in a black mask, creeping around the corner. Someone with a gun.
It has been well established in this history that Robert is not a genius, but it has also been established that he is not an idiot. He managed to scramble around behind the dumpster without being seen and drew his own gun. When his would-be assassin came into range, well. He was demoted to assassinee.
Robert got away, but it was less than twenty-four hours before the police came knocking, likely tipped off by the annoyed middleman that went out and found the wrong corpse after he couldn't get in contact with the aforementioned would-be assassin.
It could have been worse, really. Even with the whole ordeal where he had been deliberately backstabbed by an organization (and an uncle) that he had been loyal to for decades because they thought he was going crazy, but really he wasn't – he could just communicate telepathically with rats. Somehow, somehow it could probably still be worse. He took another plea bargain. Got shipped back to prison, this time for manslaughter. He was there for the bomb, and there for everything before and after. The 'after' presented more of a problem than the 'before,' because the frequency with which mice and rats tended to turn up in and around his cell combined with his well-known proficiency for acquiring small items he really shouldn't have – including, in one case, a very important set of keys (oops) – started to add up in the wake of the whole idea of Evolved people hitting the media.
Genetic testing confirmed the inevitable, and whups. Off to Moab he went.
Note: History buffs, please don't hurt me. I am obviously not one but I tried to be vague to preserve your sanity as much as my own.
