Extirpon (story)

}} Extirpon is a dark superhero tale surrounding the titular anti-hero. It is the first entry in the Tales of Extirpon sub-volume, part of the Legends volume The Gerosha Chronicles in Dozerfleet Comics. Events in the story take place around the same time as those in The Gray Champion: Freedom's Apparition.
 * image=[[Image:ExtirponPoster.jpg]]
 * caption=&lt;p class="imagecaption"&gt;Extirpon book concept front cover, featuring Extirpon in one of the earliest variants of his monster form.&lt;/p&gt;
 * author=David Stiefel
 * series=The Gerosha Chronicles: Tales of Extirpon
 * genre=Superhero&lt;br&gt;Action&lt;br&gt;Fantasy&lt;br&gt;Horror
 * publisher=Dozerfleet Comics
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 * successor=Extirpon 2

Plot
After an incident at Marl-Q Industries leads to a Marlquaan storm that affects the entire United States, several new Marlquaanites are created almost immediately. Nobody is sure how extensive the damage is, or how these enhanced beings will affect the outcome of anything. Meanwhile, a depressed mailroom clerk heads home to his apartment on that fateful evening and heads to bed early. Eric Stanley Opendi has lost his family to the Hebbleskin Gang, and his efforts to point out a kidnapping in progress to police proved futile. He is also angry with his neighbor, a man known for abusing women. As Eric heads down to go to sleep, he feels a sudden surge pulsate through him. He awakes to find himself invisible. He learns that the more obnoxious, cruel, and boastful his neighbors are; the more he is able to make anything he dreams up become real. He foils a murder in progress happening on the staircase while invisible, but then uses his newfound powers to turn a first floor standing fan into a lawn mower blade and slices off the forearms of the man who was about to commit the murder.

Eric disappears to the roof to contemplate his actions, taking solace only in the fact that nobody saw him do it. However, he reaches out his left arm and feels the pride and other vices of the entire city of St. Louis apparently feeding the power source that he has bonded to. He quickly sets to work doing research on the event, learning that his somewhat cold and manipulative girlfriend Vanna Kerling may have also been affected. However, Eric is hurt by her recent actions and unsure how to deal with her without abusing his power. So he decides to ignore the problem.

Vanna calls him up and convinces him to come over to her place. He confesses to her that something happened at his apartment, and that he overheard it all. He claims he chose to flee like a coward rather than call the cops, using a half-truth to cover for himself. He admits that he somewhat enjoyed hearing that Fred was made to pay for how he treated Mary. While Eric holds his head down in self-pity, Vanna looks away and notices that her hand is glowing as Eric talks about his anger. Vanna realizes after Eric leaves that she can clean her own house by simply wishing it, with what appears to be a "battery" that is charged by absorbing Eric's anger. She also notices that she can decay matter by touching it. A neighbor lectures her about not repaying him a short while after Eric leaves, and she uses the neighbor's anger to give him cancer right where he stands. Deciding she is a parasite, she starts going over her notes to find a parasite name that fits her: Nematode.

Eric soon finds St. Louis to be a hub of transport for many of the worst criminal degenerates in the nation. He manages to break up a major terror attack on a bridge, discovering its connections to a drug ring operating in town. He goes straight to the drug house, which turns out to be an apartment. After killing every minion there, he singles out the ringleader for torture. He learns that the ringleader killed a girl who was important to Eric much earlier in his life: his middle school crush Callie Morris. He begins reading ringleader Jared Rinehar's memories, then disposes of him in a very similar manner to how Jared disposed of Callie. He soon tracks down a supposedly "untouchable" connection of Jared's. He learns of that connection's whereabouts, allows the connection to boast of being untouchable, and then hears the connection say: "Not only will I get away; but all evidence has already been...well, extirpated!"

The man, Marshall Lawrence, soon finds himself standing up in the train car, covered in burrs. Honey begins oozing out of the burrs, and a swarm of angry bees flies into the car at seemingly impossible speed as they shatter a glass window to get in. Eric reveals himself, frees all the women aboard that were being sex-trafficked, and then replies to Marshall: "You're about to be...extirpated!" All the records that Marshall bragged would be either sealed or destroyed instead end up in the hands of various law enforcement, allowing a case to be pieced together. Eric orders the bees to kill Marshall, and they begin crawling inside him and ripping him apart from the inside out.

Eric disappears just as security arrives. Learning how his power feeds on negative emotion, Eric begins wondering if it is even worthwhile to return to his old life. He finally elects not to, liquidating his assets and deciding to wander the Earth endlessly. He is initially successful at taking out a variety of villains, often in really extreme ways. He sets to work using his adversaries' own arrogance to power him as he generates one method after another of creatively executing them. He soon discovers he can also assume a monster-like form if he gets angry and empowered enough, developing rocky skin and a magenta molten essence between the cracks. His eyes become an electric blue in that form. Rumors begin flying about an "Extirpon," and Eric adopts the moniker. He fears that his new life and career as Extirpon will prevent him from ever returning to his old life, and he becomes an international entity of fear in the hearts of criminals everywhere. It isn't long before he also finds non-lethal ways of torturing and subduing enemies. He grows so frustrated by the injustice he finds in every episode of his adventures, the he soon cannot limit himself to merely out-and-out criminals. He begins targeting corrupt politicians, school bullies, sociopathic parents of school bullies, and essentially anyone who grows to fancy himself or herself as "untouchable." It isn't long, however, before Mark Fanerri, a contractor with the State Department, decides that Extirpon poses a threat of exposing the Benghazi scandal in all its ugliness. He therefore has the government raid Lambrelli Labs, making off with enough of its technology to create a small army of miniature-sized drones to take out Extirpon with. The drones prove a challenge for Extirpon, since they have no pride of their own with which to feed him. He manages to defeat all the drones, saving the life of an ICE agent who was also being targeted for being too good at his job.

Fanerri grows desperate, especially when the ICE agent tries to sue the State Department while pressing charges on Fanerri of attempted murder. Nematode, deciding that she would love to have a position of power in the State Department, confronts Fanerri about cutting a deal with him. If he can promise her a bid for power, she'll kill Extirpon. Fanerri cuts the deal, but a lone intern overhears them. Nematode kills the intern right in front of several lawmakers, and Fanerri tells Nematode that she can kill Extirpon for free. An unphased Nematode then kills Fanerri, terrorizing the lawmakers and scattering them. The White House is evacuated, and Nematode goes on a rampage to declare herself the soon-to-be new queen of America. The ICE agent rescued by Extirpon sends him a warning that Nematode is setting him a trap. However, Extirpon ignores the warning and goes after his ex-girlfriend anyway.

The two of them wage an ultra-violent war over the streets of Washington, with Extirpon's anger feeding Nematode's pride and vice-versa. Extirpon tries to kill her when she espouses her Social Darwinism, but to no effect. He finally concludes from advice he was given in his younger years that it is easier to control anger than pride. He deliberately attempts to calm himself down, continuing to feed off her pride while she grows weaker from not having his anger to feed on. Extirpon looks on and sees an approaching helicopter out to kill both of them. Realizing the irony, he sends the defeated Nematode straight into the blades. Her defeat results in an EMP blast, which temporarily disables all electronics in the city. Extirpon rescues the helicopter pilot, covering the pilot's mouth with gel to silence the pilot's endless stream of profanity. He looks around at the damage done, then disappears in a cloud of purple smoke.

Narration reveals that Eric has come to accept his new identity, hallmarking that worldwide crime rates have dropped 15% since word got out that there was an Extirpon to fear.

Inspiration
In late December of 2008, the Dozerfleet founder needed a new way to expand the Gerosha universe. Classic Gerosha didn't seem to be quite big enough, in spite acknowledging the events in Volkonir and The Blue Face Film Strips. However, having Classic Gerosha as a universe acknowledge the events of the Volkonir universe seemed more an act of desperation than a genuine improvement.

The Dozerfleet founder would continue to be exposed to both outrageous news stories and to episodes of CSI: Miami throughout 2009-2013, which would lead to a variety of ideas for "how could this have ended differently?"-type scenarios in which victims of brutal injustice are spared from the worst of their experience by having a superpowered vigilante visit equal or disproportionate brutality on the initial aggressor. Inspirations for Extirpon from there ranged everywhere from The Mask to Spawn to Sylar from Heroes to the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. Various incidents remained random, most of them not written down, for how Extirpon would handle a situation. In late June of 2013, an actual storyline was finally drafted for Extirpon's first adventure, based on notes for concept art from 2012.

Continuity
Tying in the continuity of Extirpon with that of The Gray Champion: Freedom's Apparition was seen as a highly convenient way to both explain where Eric gets his powers from, and to assist in tying Extirpon's world in with that of the greater Gerosha mythos. Having Fanerri resort to stealing from Lambrelli Labs to create robots to annihilate Extirpon with gave the character of Extirpon an indirect link with Pilltar. Having the Marlquaan responsible for his condition gave him a sense of common ground with the Gray Champion. In 2012, when Comprehensive Gerosha was abandoned in favor of Cataclysmic Gerosha, it was seen as convenient to use these connections to make Extirpon a part of the Sodality of Gerosha in the series Sodality. Meanwhile, Extirpon was allowed to have a story about unlocking his Positive Battery in Extirpon 2 as a way to make the character a little more sympathetic. This was also so that Extirpon could be justified in having his own volume in Gerosha Legends, as opposed to being a one-off item like Blood Over Water or Sorbet. Tales of Extirpon would be added to the volumes Exploits of a Navy Rope and Pilltar Adventures to form the Gerosha Legends super pack.