Conceived by a mother who made a living gratifying men for money and a high profile patron that would forever regret celebrating a little too hard after a championship victory; Max had two simple paths to walk in life: he could follow his loving mother’s steps straight into the depths of poverty or he could emulate the life of his absentee father; a man whom Max idolized but would only find disdain in return if his father would ever bother meeting his bastard child.
Max chose the latter.
Cursed equally by ambition and poverty, Max dedicated his life to getting his hands on a suit of Power Armor so he could find fame and fortune in the arena – a feat that the cost of living was determined to render impossible. Uneducated and unskilled, Max had little in the way of employment opportunities but that was nothing that concerned him for the only field he sought was one that was always looking for more bodies regardless of qualification.
Working as a Gladiator without the Power Armor to back it up was far from an easy life. Even with the occasional win, Max was barely breaking even with almost all of his winnings going towards repair costs, hospital bills and daily expenses; but he did make some marginal profits and more importantly, he had a plan. Max was to endure un-augmented combat until he could afford a cheap hover-cycle, then he would transition to the races until his winnings were enough to purchase his first Power Armor. Never doing the math, Max never realized that he would be in his 60s before his paltry winnings ever amounted to enough to complete his plans and luckily for him, the negligence of his absentee father would prevent him from ever having to come to that realization.
Arriving home after enduring a particularly unpleasant stint in hospital, Max was welcomed by an old, beat up but fully functional NG-X67 Prophet Power Armor. After finally winning a legal battle that span decades, Max’s mother was granted his father’s former championship Bot in order to remedy 17 years worth of unpaid child support and without hesitation, she eagerly bestowed the only possession she would ever own of value upon her son, in order to help him realize his dreams. With one swift legal judgement, Max went from being the hospital’s favourite customer to a potentially stand-out Robot Gladiator.
After his first match as a Robot Gladiator, both his reputation and his Power Armor were un-salvageable messes. As soul crushing as his lost ambitions should have been, Max’s youthful resilience easily defeated the depression monster and he took it in his stride – the fleeting sense of loss was easily suppressed the moment he was paid for the match. Within days of his father’s championship bot being destroyed, Max had already found a replacement: a small Chipwell unit he didn’t even bother remembering the model number of that was all his winnings could afford. As determined as ever, Max found himself and his new bot back in the arena, conquering the hopelessness that had claimed so many pilots before him.
Max’s second match ended with the same result as his first. The Chipwell unit seemed completely inadequate for the extreme requirements of Gladiatorial combat but after purchasing and destroying seven different units in seven different matches, Max realized he didn’t care. Even facing a string of losses with no end in sight, his work was quite profitable – his cheap Chipwell unit was worth less than his loser’s purse so even a complete replacement left him with a tidy sum. Seemingly completely devoid of pride, Max was content accepting his loser’s purse and the Northern Gun Gladitorial Officials seemed all too willing to let Max continue embarassing their competitors. Before long, Max found himself acting as the Arena’s first Jobber.
The job may have been lucrative but it was far from glorious but Max’s fortunes soon changed after one otherwise ordinary night of being ridiculed by his peers in the Gladiator Lounge. Max may have never felt the need to stand up for himself but in this one instance, someone else did. After a barrage that should have been particularly potent to the uncaring Max, the father he had never before met sprang from the shadows, visually disturbed by the taunts and knocking Max’s assailant unconscious in one swift attack. Immediately, Max’s father’s tiny Chinese companion treated the bully’s two unsuspecting friends with the same efficiency.
Caught unprepared, Max could only look at the three unconscious antagonists-turned-victims and he struggled in silence to put words to all of the thoughts racing through his mind – all of which focused on his parental idol now before him. Instead of expressing his admiration, Max could only nod incoherently as his father and the little Chinese man took him to a private table and offered to make a champion of him. Sustaining his uncontrollable nodding, Max had inadvertently agreed to their vigorous training regime long before his mind had processed just what exactly he was agreeing to. His ignorance had not robbed him of the option he preferred; quite the contrary – even in his most rational moment his decision would have been the same. Any opportunity to not only get to know his father but possibly earn the affection he had always craved; was an opportunity Max could never pass up.
Max’s training was every bit as agonizing as he had expected but what proved more excruciating than the physical tasks his Chinese mentor required of him, was the fact that the majority of his training came at the hands of the stranger, his absentee father as absent as ever. Every few days his father showed up with a few pearls of wisdom regarding the weaknesses of Robots but strangely the Robot Slammer and former champion left his Asian friend in charge of the combat training. Max honed his skills as quickly as only a boy trying to impress his father could and soon enough he found himself back in Ispheming signing himself back up for the arena, this time adopting his father’s surname as his own, fighting under the name Max Finesse.
Meanwhile Max’s father and his Asian consort collected their cheques from the Naruni, whom had hired the duo to make a competitor capable enough of humiliating their hated enemies of Northern Gun by defeating their prized bots in a less respected machine. Max’s father was just glad that the job was finally complete, so he never again had to see that money-grubbing embarrassment that claimed to be his son.