Character Profile: Lars Blackpool

Everyone has that one PC or NPC, that they loved, for some reason. If it was an NPC, you knew it, because you'd never let him die...even if he became the central villain. That was my problem with Lars Blackpool, my only PC and the namesake for this blog. He had become such the character, that I couldn't let him go.
I rolled up Lars' sheet as a PC for a campaign my brother was running. He was cast as a solo, so there was the usual min-maxing, but his character points roll was very high (75 or so) so it didn't really matter. He was initially a big-gun solo, with the muscle shirt, the mohawk, the shotgun...you know...the usual. My brother's campaign lasted all of two sessions, but I kept the character. He showed up as an NPC in a solo hired by the next campaign team, and I kept winding him in.
As I incorporated him into my latest campaign, he had grown up. The mohawk had toned down, and for the most part, he left the big shotgun at home. I power-matched him to my now powerful PCs, giving him a few toys, and a very interesting personality. He may have been a solo, but he had the demeanor of a hedonistic corp, one who drinks hard and sleeps little. Before he turned on the party, he tried seducing one member, and offered them all hallucinogens. That was the kind of guy he was.
His background was also one I particularly liked. His brother was an anarchist, and his last attack was on the building of a corp Lars was contracted to. Lars and several other solos were held for days. His brother lectured about the evils of corporate America, angering Lars (only 19 at the time). When the SWAT team broke in, Lars shot his brother in the head and left the building before he could get fingerprinted. The conflict that made him abandon personal attachment was a few days later, when he realized his brother was right. Torn by guilt, he returned to the building, and after being congratulated by his supervisor, he stole two large pistols (an inventory item from when he was a PC) and shot the supervisor, as well as his secretary, several staffers, and the building's top level executive.
The problem that my players discovered about Lars is that he reconciled his brother's death by reconciling that he did it. As a result, human life doesn't have as much value to him anymore. He's turned the players three times, but only the third was big enough to get them to try and kill him. Which they can't do. I will admit that Lars was a bit twinkish, but since I played the campaign with high-schoolers, there was a lot of that. I had one particularly annoying player who twinked his characters every time, so I pulled the copy trick, copying all of his stats, skills, and inventory, and boosting them all by 2. This cybered Hulk and Lars went in, shot up a pot party, taking down two PCs with it. Neither died, but both got very pissed, especially when they argued that I "couldn't do that". It was quite unfortunate that the one player who understood my logic had been hit by a sniper early in the battle. But, admittedly, I really didn't want Lars to die. The Max Payne swagger and armament, combined with an outlook so bleak his only alternative was to laugh. Life was a big joke to him, and his only goal was not to be part of the punchline. I always bring him back.