He did not end up on the wrong end of a scientific experiment.


He did not fall into a vat of radioactive waste.


He had no near-death experiences, no trials of fire, no sudden realization of an inherent potential of heroism.


The truth was that he was simply born this way - deformed and barely seeming human, abandoned at an orphanage in the backwater town of Grimsby by a mother who hadn't even intended to conceive a child. Spurned as a freak by all, he resented his scaly hide, his inability to swallow more than a few mouthfuls of the stuff the other children called "food," his unsuccessful attempts to speak through vocal cords clearly not designed for human speech.


It didn't take him long to figure out he was not wanted and to escape the orphanage one stormy night when the spiteful wind rattled every window and drowned out the sound of his breaking out of the third-storey window.


Once free and left to his own devices in the untamed forests of South-Eastern Canada, he quickly discovered that raw meat was his food of choice; he grew, his skeletal frame quickly expanding with lean muscle as he hunted and prospered, satiating his bottomless hunger with animals large and small. But one day, he came across a family setting up camp in a clearing while he chased a deer - almost as fast as he skidded into the clearing, he turned tail and prepared to flee, not wishing to attract attention from those he knew would despise him. Too late; the father had a gun.


The full clip of bullets the father emptied into his hide merely angered him. In less time than it had taken the family to boil eggs for dinner, they - that was a father, a mother, and three children - had been gluttonously devoured. Basking in the waning sunlight, he realized that though animal flesh sustained him, the events of the evening had ignited in him a lust for human flash that had seized him by the neck and would never let him go.


There were subsequent disappearances - of people walking alone; of people in groups; of an entire tour bus, in one case. But however strong his desires for meat, he had a conscience that now bothered him every night. Sure, he had been spurned by humanity - but he could understand why and expected no more acceptance than that enjoyed by wolves, bears, or lions.


To ease his conscience, he began to switch his targeted prey - he came to recognize and seek out the predators among the humans who themselves sought to kill, maim, and violate. He took his position at the top of the food chain and quietly devoured the crime in the streets of the cities. His conscience and his belly were quiet and satiated.


He does not stay in one place for long; he has little understanding of any human language; he occasionally misreads a situation and fells the wrong man; but he has also come to become a legend in the streets, an unsolved mystery of urban nightlife.


He is Tzak, the draconic vigilante.