My Toons, Let Me Show You Them: Bad Touché

What do you get when you cross Pepe Le Pew, Batroc the Leaper and Cyrano de Bergerac?

 Zut alors! 'oo is zis 'andsome fellow?

Hon hon hon! Eet ees I, ze Bad Touché -- mercenarie extraordinaire, pireet of ze 'eart, and mastaire of ze witty rapière!

I make ze pun, no? Ze rapière wit? Ma swoord, eet ees la rapière?

...

Ma 'umair, eet ees wasted upon you Americains.

Yes, I just now realized that "sacrebleu" is misspelled. 

Bad Touché is one of my exceptionally rare boy toons, and you can see why: the concept of "Comedically Sleazy" just wouldn't work with a girl, who would instead just appear slutty and not very comedic. 

As an aside, his name in the game is Bad Touche' because I figured people wouldn't want to hunt for the é character to message him and/or invite him to teams. 

Luc-Maël Thierry Balzac's life was changed the moment he watched the fencing scene in The Princess Bride. He swore that he, too, would one day become a fencing wizard to equal -- nay, surpass -- Inigo Montoya and Westley the Dread Pirate Roberts, and after many years of wheedling his parents finally acquiesced and bought him lessons. 

You've seen the meme "While You Were Partying, I Studied the Blade"? That was Luc-Maël. He studied fencing at the expense of everything else, including social skills. Especially social skills. 

In short order, Luc-Maël earned a spot on the French Olympic Fencing Team at age 18, the youngest fencer to ever compete at that level. This is where he learned some interesting facts about himself:

• He was a sore loser, prone to sulking and scheming revenge. 
• He was an even worse winner, going out of his way to humiliate his opponents. 
• Playing by the rules doesn't guarantee anyone except the rule-makers a victory, but playing outside the rules earned him a victory in every way that mattered. 
• Cheating is only cheating if you get caught. If you're good enough, you can cheat and not get caught... and if you're good enough not to get caught, you deserve to win. 
• As much as he liked girls, they didn't like his boorish behavior and lack of social awareness. 

If you are thinking "This guy sounds like he's heading towards being a serial rapist," well, you're not wrong. He was headed that way, but someone influential got to him first and set him on a slightly different path. 

That someone was an Fortunata Fateweaver accompanying the Arachnos Olympic Team. (Well, technically, the Rogue Islands Olympic Team, but the Rogue Isles are run by Arachnos, so it's the same thing.) She saw the potential within Luc-Maël, both as a budding villain and even perhaps as the Destined One. It took very little effort to convince him to abandon France and travel back to the Rogue Isles with her, as he thought he was going to live a life of lawless luxury, surrounded by a bevy of beautiful babes. 

What he got, however, was a crash-course in survival of the fittest, as the moment the Arachnos transport touched down Luc-Maël was kicked out into the unforgiving streets of Darwin's Landing. The Fateweaver told him that he now had ultimate freedom, but everyone else did too, and if he wanted to live he'd need to be better than everyone else. 

Much to Luc-Maël's surprise, he succeeded. At first he was a petty thug fighting for food and shelter, but he quickly built a reputation as a skilled swordsman. He adopted the name "Bad Touché" as a double entendre: "touché" means "touch" in French, and signifies landing a scoring strike on your opponent, but it also makes him sound like a pervert molester. You wouldn't think this would be a benefit, but there's a certain psychological advantage to having your opponent think you're going to do terrible things to them, especially if you're so skilled that you can cut away their clothes to impair and/or humiliate them. 

At this point in his career, Bad Touché has completely thrown himself into his caricature persona of "Very Frawnch Pervy Swordsman" and enjoys every glorious, hammy moment of it. He's successful enough and rich enough that he doesn't need to work, and so he takes whatever jobs challenge or amuse him. In short, he's not so much evil (although he's done bad things) as he is extremely self-centered, self-indulgent, and arrogant, making him less of a supervillain and more like the fencing version of a heel wrestler keeping kayfabe. 

Other notes of interest:

• He used to fight with a rapier and main gauche, but quickly developed the skill to fight with paired rapiers to take advantage of the extra reach. 
• The rapiers he has now are made of impervium and have monomolecular edges to them, making them incredibly sharp.
• He stole a gravity-reducing belt early in his career, giving him the ability to make tremendous leaps and move with surprising grace. 
• He has advanced, lightweight body armor build into his costume, which he thinks makes him look like a cross between a dashing pirate and a handsome musketeer. 
• The beret? Well, he's French. 

Hon hon hon!