Jailbird Joe

Jailbird Joe in his work release uniform
Jailbird Joe
Player: @Bastille Boy
Origin:	Science
Archetype:	Tanker
Security Level:	50
Personal Data
Real Name:	Joseph Dell'Orso
Known Aliases:	N/A
Species:	human
Age:	40
Height:	6'0"
Weight:	190
Eye Color:	brown
Hair Color:	brown
Biographical Data
Nationality:	Rogue Isles
Occupation:	Convict Laborer
Place of Birth:	Marconeville, Port Oakes
Base of Operations:	Cellblock A, Port Oakes Penitentiary
Marital Status:	Single
Known Relatives:	Large family, not in touch with any of them
Known Powers
Willpower, Super Strength
Known Abilities
Graphite drawing, agricultural science, classical music literacy
Equipment
Work release uniform, impact-resistant glasses
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Joseph Dell'Orso, a.k.a. "Jailbird Joe," is a lifer at the Port Oakes Penitentiary, a prison farm loosely affiliated with the Rogue Island Police. His incarceration began on his 18th birthday, in April 2000, when he scaled the fence around the Pen's farmland and got himself arrested.

The guards, who call themselves "corruptional officers," regard Joe as a model prisoner. He obeys orders and follows rules to the letter. He works diligently on the farm and in the laundry. He has earned a G.E.D. and a college degree while incarcerated. He regularly leaves the grounds of the Pen, beats up people he considers bullies, takes their money, and returns to the front gate at least 50 minutes before lockdown with the cash stuffed in his socks, to be discovered during the mandatory strip search.

Joe describes himself as a "rescue dog." He believes that the Pen's regeneration auras are responsible for his strength and his unusual resilience, and he fears that he will become a weakling if he leaves the Pen for too long. His fears were realized when a heist gone wrong led to a nightmarish two-year stint in the Zig. Now safely back in the custody of the Rogue Island Department of Corruptions, Joe is fiercely loyal to his rogue jailers.

Biography

Childhood and origin of his nickname

Joe was born and raised in the Villa Montrose neighborhood of Port Oakes. His father died when he was nine. When he was twelve, his mother married a Mook underboss who had two sons of his own, one Joe's age, one two years older.

At school, Joe was constantly mocked. He was bookish, and he couldn't catch a ball, and he hated the roughhousing the other Mook boys enjoyed so much. After his mother's remarriage, his stepbrothers made it known that he was a bedwetter. He got called "Four Eyes" and "Pee-Jay Joe." When he started high school, the older boys started calling him another, unprintable word. He asked his mother what that word meant. His stepfather was in the room and said, "It means you're never going to be a man."

Joe took refuge in reading, drawing, and riding his bike in the hills west of Port Oakes, away from the bullies. When he was fifteen, he was riding downhill on a trail and hit a rock that made him take a bad fall and break his knee. He was unable to stand. Lucky for him, he was just half a mile from the perimeter fence of the Port Oakes Pen, and some prisoners at work heard him cry out. Two officers from the prison found Joe and got him down the hill.

The officers fetched one of the prisoners, a former vigilante with a medical degree and X-Ray vision. The amateur physician reported that Joe had fractured a growth plate. If the boy's knee healed improperly, his legs might end up different lengths. Sending him to Black Heart Memorial Hospital would be unwise. It would be safer for him to heal in the regeneration aura in the infirmary.

Joe stayed in the infirmary for a week. He was usually alone with one or two officers, but he was allowed to talk with the prisoners who brought him his meals. They did not seem to Joe like dangerous men. Some of them were former vigilantes who foolishly tried to take on corruption in the Rogue Island Police and had since been tamed. The rest were two-bit crooks who neglected to pay the right bribes.

The prisoners and the officers were different from the men in Joe's neighborhood. They were strong, some of them extraordinarily strong, but there was a softness about them. Maybe it was the effect of the regeneration aura. It felt good, being in that aura. It was soothing.

When Joe woke up in a wet bed his first night, there was no mockery and no judgment. The officer on duty helped him change his sheets and got him a spare, unmarked convict uniform to replace his wet clothes. Looking at himself in the mirror wearing that uniform, Joe felt manly. The stripes made his shoulders look broader, Joe thought. Maybe one day he would be as strong and masculine as the prisoners he'd met. They were all so handsome...

Suddenly Joe understood the slur his schoolmates and his stepbrothers had been calling him. He knew that it was true. And he knew that he needed a new family.

After a week, Joe's knee was deemed well enough to send him home with crutches. Back at Villa Montrose High, the other students had a lot of questions. Joe tried to give monosyllabic answers, but the questions kept coming. Once Joe started talking, he would not shut up. He went on and on about healing auras and strong, gentle guards and prisoners who weren't really criminals and the tame guard wolf he was allowed to pat once. One of Joe's bullies, a Marcone kid, called him "Jailbird." The name stuck.

Arrest and development of his powers

High school was hellish. Joe couldn't wait to graduate and leave Port Oakes for Aeon University. He knew he'd get in. He was a straight A student and a math whiz. In his senior year, Joe got permission to leave school early twice a week so he could take multivariable calculus at Aeon U. It got him out of gym class, and he hoped it would be a taste of his bright future.

In the lecture hall, Joe heard some young Fortunatas whispering behind him. "That's the bedwetter Mook kid," one of them said. At the end of class, Joe stood up and felt a psychic bolt assault his mind. Suddenly his jeans were soaking wet. His classmates saw and laughed. The thuggish men on the Rogue Island Ferry didn't laugh at Joe's misfortune, but they definitely noticed, and some of them decided he'd be an easy target. The next week, on his way home from the ferry terminal, two strange men confronted Joe, beat him up, and took his wallet.

Though Joe was used to bullying, he'd never been beaten up before. He realized his stepfather's men had been protecting him in Villa Montrose. He realized he couldn't count on their protection elsewhere. College would not be an escape for him. He was doomed to be a victim, he thought. There was no safe place in the Rogue Isles for someone like him.

Then Joe remembered the week he spent in a prison infirmary. There was, in fact, a safe place.

On his eighteenth birthday, he put a pair of wire cutters in his pocket and rode his bike into the hills. He biked to the perimeter fence around the farmland attached to the Port Oakes Pen. He waited for dusk, then he scaled the chain link fence, cut the barbed wire on top, and climbed over. He slept between two rows of strawberry plants. At dawn, he approached the prison, hands in the air.

The corruptional officers recognized Joe. No explanation was necessary. The chain gang does not turn down volunteers. Joe signed a statement confessing to trespassing, damaging D.O.C. property, and bringing an instrument of escape onto prison grounds. He was sentenced to three years with the assurance that the release date was only a theory.

No doubt Joe harbored fantasies about it would be like to live in a prison full of strong, handsome men. If he hoped to find a boyfriend quickly, his hopes were dashed. He was the youngest person in his cellblock by five years. The other prisoners regarded him as scarcely more than a child and therefore off limits. It didn't help that he was required to wear waterproof "superhero underwear" to bed.

Though nobody wanted to be Joe's boyfriend, many people wanted to be his friend or his mentor. The Soviet war hero in the cell next to Joe's, who looked 60 but was 80, regaled him with stories about the battle of Stalingrad and escaping the USSR via Finland. The mechanical engineer who'd had a falling out with Dr. Aeon showed Joe the prison library and the small lab where prisoners were trying to build a robot janitor. A youngish Mook and a youngish Marcone, who were, to Joe's astonishment, fast friends, convinced Joe to go with them to the weight room.

It turns out Joe had a talent for lifting. He'd been a terrible athlete in school because he was uncoordinated, but barbell lifting doesn't require quick reflexes. The auras helped Joe's progress. The Soviet war hero in the next cell had a healing aura that was active even in his sleep. When Joe worked in the fields, he was usually in at least two overlapping regeneration auras. The corruptional officers rewarded diligence and obedience with invigorating buffs. Joe got a lot of buffs. All the healing magic effectively gave Joe the benefits of anabolic steroids with none of the risks. He strength grew quickly.

After eighteen months, the warden authorized Joe for work release. Taking assignments outside the Pen wasn't mandatory, and Joe was happy working in the fields with the auras. But one day the warden told Joe that the D.O.C. had received a lucrative offer to help unload a ship. If Joe went with some fellow prisoners to work at the docks, supervised by two corruptional officers, the D.O.C. would spend some of the money on new physics books for the library. In case the Fortunatas showed up, Joe could wear "superhero underwear." Joe reluctantly agreed to go.

Down by the docks, a gang approached the work crew. They were armed with bats and chains, and one of them was brandishing a pistol.

"All right ladies, these crates are ours now," said the gunman. "Load 'em into our truck. Get a move on." He pointed the pistol at Joe. "You too, little girl. And pull up your pants. Your diaper's showing." He aimed the gun at the officers. "Get working, you lazy pigs."

Joe was used to being insulted, but hearing the gangster call his jailers "pigs" sent him into a rage. He charged at the gunman and started throwing punches. The pistol discharged, and the bullet grazed Joe's left side, but Joe kept fighting. He knocked out the gunman and two of the other gangsters. The rest of the gang fled.

The next day, the warden had a talk with Joe. Though Joe was a diligent farm worker, and he obviously relished the work, his help wasn't essential. He had no plant control powers, no earth manipulation, no ability to summon rain. His physical strength could be more profitably used beating up bullies and taking their money for the D.O.C.'s use. Would he be willing to accept a mission once a week? It would be best to start by beating up Council, the warden suggested. Council are squishy.

Stint in the Zig

As Joe's experience grew, the tasks his jailers assigned him became more adventurous. He was sent to fight more challenging enemies: Malta, Carnies, Longbow. Eventually, the D.O.C. grew confident enough in Joe's abilities and in his loyalty to send him on missions abroad.

His first three bank heists in Paragon City went as planned. He went as part of a team, led by a Destined One and accompanied by an Arachnos helicopter. He was always in the presence of established villains who would prevent him from doing anything foolish. Whenever he saw cops, their weapons were already drawn. Joe fought effectively against the police and Longbow. A mask concealed his identity.

On Joe's fourth bank heist, his team forgot about Joe's behavioral conditioning and the vulnerability it creates. The team split up to cause some mayhem before attacking the bank. Joe was alone in an alley when an unarmed PPD psi-cop approached and asked him what he was doing. Joe stammered. The cop told Joe to put his hands behind his back. Joe's conditioning kicked in, and he complied. By the time he realized his mistake, the cuffs were already on. He resisted the temptation to confess everything. He was sent to the Zig on charges of criminal property damage.

Joe had seen some prison movies, but he had no real idea how to survive in an American prison. He behaved as the Rogue Island Department of Corruptions had trained him to behave. He called correctional officers "sir" and "ma'am," and he treated them with abject deference. He allowed them to give him power-suppressing drugs by mouth on his first day. Most new inmates in the Zig have to be restrained and receive the drug cocktail by injection.

Among the inmates in Joe's cellblock were several people he'd fought in the Rogue Isles and a lot of gang members who regarded Joe as an enemy. At first, they didn't attack him, because of his size and his history. Then someone called him "cop-lover," and he didn't react. Other prisoners called him anti-gay slurs. Again he didn't fight.

Sensing weakness, six Hellion inmates ganged up on Joe. He fought back valiantly, but his strength was suppressed. He woke up in the infirmary in a soaking wet bed. With the return of his childhood bedwetting, his fate was sealed: despite his muscles, his place in the Zig's inmate hierarchy would be at the bottom. He lasted two more weeks in general population before the COs took pity on him and put him in protective custody.

Protective custody was overcrowded, and single celling wasn't possible. Joe's cellmate was Jacob Hobbes, a very short man who'd provided the magical resistance shields for a bank robbery. The two men had just been through similar ordeals, and they bonded instantly. They both had stories to share. Jake listened with interests to Joe's stories about the Port Oakes Pen and his laments about how much better his life had been.

Lucky for Joe, his cellmate turned out to be a Destined One. When Arachnos came to bust Destined Ones out of the Zig, Jake insisted that they take Joe, too. Jake had no knowledge of the Rogue Isles, and he asked Joe to stay with him and help him find his way. For nearly a month, they lived by theft, with Joe doing most of the stealing and Jake providing resistance shields and keeping Joe away from the police.

Then Jake found the ad in the Rogue Isles Protector. The Port Oakes Pen was hiring corruptional officers. "Experience in the correctional industry abroad required," said the ad, "Non-violent convictions only." Jake jokingly pointed out that both of them were technically eligible. Joe told Jake that he would make a wonderful corruptional officer. The prisoners would love Jake's resistance shields and his healing aura.

Jake agreed to apply to work at the Port Oakes Pen, but only if Joe applied with him. He didn't think the D.O.C. would re-arrest Joe. After all, he had, technically, completed his Rogue Island sentence when he got captured in Paragon City. Sure enough, when the two men arrived at the Pen for their job interviews, the corruptional officers on duty were delighted to see Joe, and they were delighted that Joe was applying to be an officer. "We wished we could have made you an officer before," one of them said, "but you weren't eligible."

The two men aced their interviews. They got measured for their uniforms and were told to report to the officers' barracks a week later to begin their training. When they arrived, they were issued their uniforms and sent to the locker room to change. An hour later, Joe had not emerged. An officer peeked into the locker room and saw Joe sitting on a bench with one trouser leg on and muttering, "It's not right."

Ten minutes later, the deputy warden appeared in the locker room, carrying Joe's old striped uniform and his hero-proof leg irons. He asked Joe, "Is this the uniform you really want?" Joe nodded.

When Joe got out of the locker room, he saw his friend and said, "I'm so sorry, sir. I couldn't do it." It did not really surprise Jake to see Joe in convict stripes. It was a surprise to be called "sir." A pleasant surprise, Jake thought.

Joe's prediction about Jake's talent proved accurate. Jake completed his training with flying colors and quickly rose through the ranks. Today, Jacob Hobbes is the warden of the Port Oakes Penitentiary. Joe's former cellmate has become his master. They remain, in some sense, friends.

Powers and weaknesses

Joe's primary power is his resilience. He can keep working through pain and fatigue. He can take a punch, a stab wound, or even a bullet and keep fighting. His wounds heal quickly. After getting knocked out, he is usually able to wake quickly, get up, and continue fighting. On solo missions, this ability is a key part of his strategy.

Joe attributes his resilience to spending most of his time in magical regeneration and healing auras. Some of these auras are installed permanently in the cellblocks of the Port Oakes Pen. Others are temporary buffs, granted by corruptional officers to manipulate prisoners' behavior. The auras are indeed responsible for Joe's fast healing and his ability to sustain a bullet wound, but Joe underestimates the degree to which his resilience is a product of his childhood in Marconeville. He is only dimly aware of the ways in which the Pen's operant conditioning program has selectively strengthened his willpower.

His other major power is extraordinary strength. It is a product of a barbell lifting routine tailored to exploit the quick recovery made possible by the Pen's auras. His athletic ability is one-dimensional. His reflexes are slow, and his coordination is poor. His fellow prisoners do not invite him to play basketball. His fighting prowess comes from strength, not skill.

Joe's defenses have major vulnerabilities. Willpower is an inherently limited form of armor. Joe can tolerate a hail of punches, but he can only sustain so many bullet wounds. He can fight through a cloud of tear gas, but not through a cloud of lethal poison. The right combination of magical debuffs can easily take him down.

Jailbird Joe has another, disastrous weakness: he trusts police officers.

His youthful experiences with the authorities were uncommonly positive. The operant conditioning program in the Port Oakes Pen, which relies on reward rather than punishment, has trained Joe to treat law enforcement officers with fond respect. Intellectually, Joe knows that he should not trust foreign police officers as he treats officers in the Pen or on the streets of the Rogue Isles. But when he sees a blue uniform and a badge, he feels safe.

If the police draw their guns or menace him with other weapons, Joe's defensive instincts kick in, and he fights normally. An unarmed, uniformed cop can easily arrest Joe simply by asking him to put his hands behind his back.

Personality and interests

In the company of civilians, Joe is almost unfailingly polite. Like a child, Joe addresses civilians as as "Mr." or "Ms." unless they ask him to call them by their first names. He expects to be called "Joe" and is surprised and uncomfortable when someone calls him "Mr. Dell'Orso."

Though he usually treats civilians with deference, he absolutely refuses to disobey the rules his jailers have set for him. He never removes his cap while on release. It is part of his work release uniform, which he is required to wear when he is outside the Pen's walls. If asked by a civilian to remove his hat, he takes his leave if he can. If he can't, he apologizes and explains the rule.

To his jailers, he is abjectly docile. He seems to relish being reminded of his place. When he hears the rattle of gang irons in the morning, his face lights up. Some of the COs who work with the K9 corps have taken to rewarding Joe's good behavior by rubbing his buzzcut hair and calling him a "good boy." Joe grins ear to ear.

When people ask why he doesn't run away from prison, despite having many opportunities, he gives a gently joking answer, such as, "I like living in a big house with a yard." If asked to justify his extreme docility, he says, "There's a difference between being humiliated and being humbled. I should know; I grew up gay in Port Oakes in the nineties."

Joe's incarceration has not stifled the intellectual and artistic interests he has had since childhood. His passions for drawing and reading are easy to accommodate. Drawing is an inexpensive hobby, and the Port Oakes Pen has a large library of stolen books. Joe's love of classical music is more difficult to satisfy. Sometimes, with his jailers' permission, Joe stays out late after a mission to attend one of the free recitals at Aeon University. He sits in the back row to avoid blocking anyone's view with his cap.

He dreams of attending a performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera in his convict uniform without anyone questioning his presence.