Outrage, the Viral Vigilante
Outrage was created by Fabian Nicieza and Reilly Brown, it can be read on Webtoon
DISCLAIMER: The Imgur Purge of May 2023 deleted most of the linked scans. Until I am aided in reclaiming all missing images, this message will remain here.
Background
One fateful night, a vile man was anonymously sexually harassing a female coworker through text. He was so cocksure that she, or anyone else, could lift a finger to stop him. That is, until his computer screen turned to static, and was replaced by an asymmetrical malicious face that said his name aloud. If the man’s ego wasn’t shattered, it would be now when an arm reached out of his computer and slapped him across the face. A digital being crawled out of the screen, and gave him a harsh verbal and physical beatdown that would forever cement itself in his brain to remind him of his awful actions. After beating the shit out of him, the vigilante would vanish into thin air. Afterwards, the transcript of his conversation was leaked to his workplace and he was laid off. The victim of his sexting had her phone frozen by the being with his angry face plastered on it, and the message “STOP BEING A VICTIM. GET OUTRAGED.” With this message appearing on many other victims’ phones, he became simply known as Outrage.
Since then, more of these attacks would occur all over the world in a similar fashion. Some bully, racist, sexist, or whatever other type of scummy person, is visited by the pixelated punisher through their device, beats them up senselessly while mocking them for their actions, and disappears to claim his next victim. After gaining a contact list from a scummy news reporter he beat up, Outrage worked up the political ladder, beating up each schmuck one by one until he worked all the way up to the 45th president of the United States.
Due to the nature of his attacks, he had the attention of the FBI. Agents Ernst and Morrison were sent out to discover the identity of the digital assailant. After visiting many tech monoliths, the agents found the prime suspect: the Jersey City-based charitable tech company Re:Solutions. Someone there had to be controlling Outrage. Turns out, the man responsible for all this chaos was Jung-ho Choi, AKA Kenneth Choi, and chill and nerdy tech wizard. Nobody expected the sweet and calm coder to bear so much rage towards the world, but all signs pointed to him.
When Kenny was young, he had frequent outbursts, but learned that he should never get worried about things he had no control over. However, he still harbors rage towards the hateful idiots, liars, and bigots that inhabit it, and the people that don’t do anything to help stop them. The terrible part of it is that the worst of humanity overshadows the best they have to offer. Someone had to put them in their place, and he decided to put his internalized anger to good use. Before Re:Solutions, Kenny worked for Safetech International, a private company with military contracts. They developed a failed prototype for holographic imaging technology—it was stellar work, but Safetech couldn’t maintain the holograms’ cohesion of the hard-light photons, causing them to dissipate. Kenny perfected the hard-light holographic data transfer when he developed his own prototype, appropriating their same hard-light technology to secretly develop Outrage. By implanting subdermal chips into his fingertips, Kenny was able to connect to the internet while asleep and subconsciously direct Outrage towards a target. And with the photon stabilizing field, he could manifest Outrage as hard-light. However, Outrage acts independently from Kenny, and he has no control over him unless he forces his hand. While Outrage is Kenny’s subconscious, he also has the combined personality of the Re:Solutions team, having absorbed the group’s emails, browser history, and text into his algorithm when Kenny first entered the system at his office. Outrage is their collective super-ego.
Kenny realized he took things too far when Outrage caused an electrical malfunction throughout Seattle and New York City. He had to act quickly, because Safetech was developing their own holographic warrior to stop Outrage: Trigger, the patriotic and stereotypically American “hero” designed to protect the net from viruses like Outrage. In actuality, Trigger is a trojan virus, who violates everyones’ internet security in the name of keeping Americans safe.
While Outrage was scrubbing away all information on the Re:Solutions team in cyberspace, his party was crashed by Trigger. Eager to finally have a nemesis, the two fought, but Outrage lost, severing his access to the processing algorithm, returning him to Kenny’s conscious. While Kenny was recoding Outrage’s mapping system, he was arrested by the FBI. Agents Ernst and Morrison questioned him and learned about Trigger’s true nature, and agreed to collaborate with Kenny to shut him down. Joined by the rest of Re:Solutions, they recreate Outrage to take down Trigger before he absorbs everyone’s private information. Because it appears Outrage can’t stop a virus that’s already pervasive throughout the system and their fight is quite literally destroying the internet, Kenny resorted to frying his subdermal chips, severing his connection to Outrage and trapping the two in a cramped bubble neither could escape from.
Aside from the internet having become mostly transparent now, everything seemed to settle down. The Safetech CEO was arrested, Re:Solutions was cleared of charges, and Kenny being sentenced to five years of serving the FBI. It seemed to be the end of Outrage, but he lived on in the hearts of many. He inspired a revolution of people dressing up as him and parading his message and ideals to spark a change in the world. However, said message was often appropriated and misused by the wrong types of people who became a vocal danger to society. Kenny was put to work by helping locate the “outragers” and give them a stern talking through a replication of Outrage to have all of them collectively arrested. He didn’t anticipate his performance would drive them all away—and the hologram couldn’t physically interact with people. Instead, the FBI brought in one of the arrested Safetech scientists to develop a better way of herding all the outragers: holographic troops capable of traveling through devices to arrest people—Major Outrage models.
Because Kenny is forced to help weaponize Major Outrage units for the government, he stages a plan to sabotage the project. Although he was too late to stop them from being released, he managed to free Outrage from his prison, and let him go to town on the Major Outrage. The military retaliated by imposing martial law and shutting down the country’s internet, effectively keeping Outrage from returning to cyberspace. Thanks to that, he joined forces with Kenny and the agents to execute a plan. Outrage took to the streets, to influence the arguing protestors to work together and focus their rage against the US military, which was staging a coup within itself. In order to stop the coup, Outrage returned to Kenny to request him to create a bigger threat that will unite the whole country against them. Using the military’s tech, Outrage combined many Major Outrage units into one digital behemoth to take down.
Outrage didn’t expect the fight to be so tough, but what was more shocking was that after defeating him, the military freed Trigger, who overtook Outrage’s previous opponent, and absorbed every Major Outrage unit to become a colossus. Even worse, he started firing photon neutralizing bullets that traveled all across America to hit people. It was a difficult fight, but Outrage sacrificed himself in order to beat Trigger once and for all.
Trigger exploded, causing a wide-scale particle fallout across the world. Thanks to the efforts of Outrage and the populous, the world wide web was back online. Kenny had two more years added to his sentence to help with the fallout. Everything seemed to be back to normal… but neither Outrage nor Trigger truly died. As world governments collected the particles to recreate what was left behind, the Outrage and Trigger reformed, now fused into one being with combined ideals. Now, he seeks to unite humanity past the borders they built around themselves, and instead, under his own image.
Equipment
Surf Board
Digital Excalibur
Depixelating Chiclet Guns
Turrets
Shield
Abilities
CQC
Hacking
Hard-Light Hologram Physiology
Extra Limb Generation
Elasticity
Hard-Light Construct Generation
Size Manipulation
Technology Manipulation
Electricity Manipulation
Duplication
Flight
Information Analysis
Healing
Predictive Algorithm
Photon Field Absorption
Techniques
Unnamed Clone Attack
Cyberspace
Oh hey, another new section! If a series' cosmology, location, etc. is highly relevant to a character's abilities, I'll feature a section dedicated to it.
Cyberspace, also called Interspace, is a binary world of 1s and 0s, described by Outrage as a universe (albeit a figurative one, considering this is a cyber world). He surfs through to get from one device to another. Through these canals, he can move from Michigan to Tokyo in an instant. Cyberspace is home to every bit of data within the net: email, text messages, Twitter posts, internet videos, and of course, everyone’s internet history.
The binary that appears throughout Cyberspace is like a wall. When Trigger dug his fingers into the binary, he was able to block many peoples’ access to their devices after finding dirt on them. Thus, being able to do this lets one collect and control the data flow. The more data one collects, the less… EVERYTHING there is on the internet, which is basically destroying cyberspace.
If the internet were to be closed off from an outside source, pathways to personal phones and computers would be closed off.
Feats
Overall
- During his initial rampage, Outrage has assaulted 12,456 people in total (based), including high profile people like corrupt news anchors and politicians
- Outrage caused 4 million counts of computer trespass, illegal access, illegal interception, data interference, and systems interference
- Took a dump on former president Trump's phone… his shit is the poop emoji
- Caused an electrical malfunction throughout all of New York City and Seattle
- Is fluent in different languages, like English, Spanish, and Korean
- Fought Trigger, who breached Facebook and the FBI’s security by destroying their firewalls, and blocked many peoples’ access to their devices
- Defeated the Major Outrage Fighting Forces, the commanding units of the Major Outrage soldiers.
- Took out an entire unit of General Outrage with giant lamb shish kabob constructs
- On the same day he was wiping out Major Outrage, he took down a drug cartel gang in Florida (by wrapping them in a giant holographic tortilla and throwing them into the dumpster) and a group of terrorists in Afghanistan
- Took down a group of Outrage Troopers with two guns
- Defeated a bunch of nazi outragers
- Was able to defeat a bunch of Major Outrage by wrapping himself around them
- Outrage absorbed all of the data on the internet, making him aware of everything that has and still is happening on it
- Fought the Major Outrage units across America while cloned all across the country
- Defeated Trigger in his ultimate state, who neutralized millions of American citizens with seizure-inducing bullets
Strength
- Outgrew the roof of a car
- Outrage’s second fight with Trigger in Cyberspace was so potent that it invaded TV and destroyed whatever device it appeared on.
- Scales to Trigger, who was destroying the cyberspace universe by absorbing too much of its data
- Killing Commander Outrage caused a small explosion on a mountainside
- Strong enough to rip out a bathroom sink from its counter
Speed
- Faster than Trigger, who can react to lasers. There is a relativistic calc in this link.
- Moves so fast that he can be seen making afterimages
- Scales to Trigger’s absorbed form, who could fire photon neutralizing bullets across the globe (rela)
Durability
- Was hit by Trigger so hard that it cracked his visor, sending him bouncing across data before landing, causing a wall-level explosion
- He's able to survive being completely dismembered
- Survived being absorbed into Trigger, which could've completely erased him by absorbing his photon particles
- Was punched into a building, cracking the outer wall
- Outrage survived within Trigger. After growing larger than a mountain, the explosion caused a global photon particle fallout… at the cost of fusing with Trigger within cyberspace. Mind you the explosion was completely harmless to humans, but likely would have annihilated photon beings
Weaknesses
- Outrage can’t be depixelated, so the main thing that can destroy him is attacking him directly in cyberspace.
- Outrage lacks control and self-restraint, which led to him pissing off the wrong people and getting beaten by Trigger.
- If the national internet is shut down, he can’t access frequencies other than ones used by law-enforcement agencies
Matchup Potential
Outrage vs Freakazoid (Outrage vs Freakazoid!)
(thumbnail by Vibe Check)
Vibe Check
It took me ages to find a matchup for Outrage that really vibed with me. I received some opponent suggestions in the past, but those had more to do with being digital entities instead of an interesting core theme. Something like warriors from the web who try to keep the world safe from the predators from abuse others on the internet. However, someone recently suggested a character to me I couldn't have ever predicted would sound good paired against Outrage, and now I love it.
Let's talk about Outrage vs Freakazoid. From what I've seen on discussions regarding Freakazoid MUs, something I don't see people focus on is his connection to the internet. All his crazy powers came from a computer bug, and like Outrage, he has access to all knowledge from the internet. I'd boil the general theme down to wisecracking reference machine vigilantes with the internet at their fingertips. Both of their origins greatly pertain to the net and have access to all information on the world wide web.
It'll likely be an uphill battle convincing others to enjoy this matchup while Freakazoid has more popular opponents like The Mask. While I do like that matchup to, let me share why I think he'd be cool against Outrage.
Freakazoid is the best kind of foil for Outrage to be paired against I'd imagine the fight would start with Freakazoid in whatever random shenanigan he's gotten himself into, before Outrage exits his phone to beat him up for something dumb he said online. However, Freakazoid immediately gets distracted by something random, disregarding Outrage's threats and monologues, which understandably gets him really pissed. Outrage hasn't encountered anyone with a reaction quite like his, and he's physically capable enough to force Outrage to get out of his way. Along with that, the banter has a lot of fun potential. Both spout pop culture references left and right and overall have really silly attitudes. It's made more interesting by Outrage's Deadpool-like edge paired with Freakazoid's airheaded goofball personality.
The fight could be really fun too. Freakazoid's packing with toonforce up the wazoo, but I'd argue that Outrage can fit his fighting style. His feats aren't as over the top (at least outside cyberspace), but he can get just as silly. I can easily picture Outrage wrapping Freakazoid in a burrito or smacking him with a headless goat and the tone not feeling out of place. I'd imagine it has a bit of a cat and mouse dynamic with Outrage trying to fight Freakazoid while he's distracted, leading to many goofups and hijinx both get into. There'd definitely be scenes with both fighting head-on, with Freakazoid using whatever power or object he pulls out of his ass while Outrage utilizes his digital powers and weapon constructs. I could even see this fight spanning globally, as Freakazoid could punch him across the globe and Outrage can travel through cyberspace to keep up with his amazing speed. It could even lead to some gags involving monuments across the world. The fight has to end in cyberspace, as that's where Freakazoid would best be able to take him down. Cyberspace is ripe for all sorts of jokes too, like either one using tweets or meme images to defend themselves or toss at each other.
It goes without saying that Freakazoid wins. Even if Outrage is a lot stronger in cyberspace, I'm confident Freakazoid is more than capable of actually killing him there. Based Freakazoid dub tho.
NEXT TIME ON WCAB… whenever I feel like it
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