The Chino & Homeboy Universe

Killian

5 min read

Killian

Killian Character reference art generated with AI.

Aliases: none Status: Recurring

Killian is introduced mid-getaway: Chino and Homeboy round a corner into a lightning-scorched alley and find him on his knees, smoke curling off his skin, a headless body standing rigid beside him with a sword still locked in its dead grip (4442). He sheathes his own blade and bolts the instant he clocks them (4448). It’s Homeboy who chases him down, sword in hand, forcing a fight neither of them wanted. Homeboy insists the whole time that he only wants to talk, panics, steps in too fast, and puts his blade through Killian’s chest (4632). Killian doesn’t go down. He grabs the hilt buried in him and starts pulling it back out (4644), so Chino drives the second sword into his other side, and he finally collapses (4648-4650). What follows is the joke the story is built on: they drag his corpse to Uncle Rob’s, wrap it in trash bags in the garage (4710), and a few minutes later the bag twitches. Uncle Rob is the one who rips it open to let him breathe (4736), and gets the first exchange with him: “Who the fuck are you?” “Name’s Killian” (4740-4742), delivered, per the text, “his voice smooth despite the circumstances” (4742). That unbothered composure (bound, freshly dead, mid-interrogation) is his whole character: he clarifies he’s “from Wales, and immortal” (4762), later specifies he’s “immortal, not a vampire” (4862), and claims decades of history as a wartime spy who met a young, mediocre painter in Austria years before that painter became Hitler (4846-4850). None of it is ever independently confirmed, and the text plays every line of it for laughs, but nothing in the story contradicts it either. He did, after all, just get run through with two swords and get up talking.

Killian’s aliases field is empty because the text never gives him one: no surname, no nickname beyond Uncle Rob’s later “guinea pig” (6652), which is a job description, not a name.

The Adventures: Volume 01

Killian’s introduction in There Can Be Only One doesn’t end with the revival. Uncle Rob’s crew hauls him, still bagged, out to the Ominous Forest to bury him alive, on the theory that only decapitation actually kills him (4808). He talks his way out of the hole with money: a thousand dollars each for Chino, Homeboy, and Chuy, a million for Uncle Rob, drawn from a private stash Uncle Rob already has access to because he hacked Killian’s phone “while you were dead” (4950). That ransom is the hinge the story turns on. It buys him out of the grave, but it also puts him in the trunk of Uncle Rob’s car for the ride to his own mansion, a neglected hundred-twenty-acre estate he admits he hasn’t set foot in for “a couple of decades” (4980, 4984). There, Uncle Rob counter-offers: he’ll “take care of” the place (meaning move in and run his experiments out of it), and Killian, after some token resistance, shakes on it (5036). The story ends with the whole crew sprawled on his one uncovered couch, eating the edibles Chino and Homeboy were supposed to be delivering, Killian included: “Mmm… these are really good. Give my best regards to Mrs. Dealer” (5056).

He recurs in Big Trouble in Chinatown, where Uncle Rob brings him to an underground Kumité as his test subject for a new strain called Psycho Crusher, introducing him flatly as “my guinea pig, Killian” (6652). Killian takes a hit before his first match, gets thrown around the pit for over a minute with no effect, and then the strain kicks in all at once: his eyes, hands, and feet flare white, and he ends the fight by launching a glowing energy blast that knocks his opponent out cold, winning “by divine surprise” (6756-6764). He goes into a later match still glowing, only to find his next dose has gone missing. Homeboy quietly diverted half of it to dose Chuy instead, without telling him (7144-7158, 7244-7250). He’s shoved into his final fight visibly shorted and furious about it: “I really fucking hate you” (7258). The story cuts away to the crew back at Chino’s apartment before showing how that last match goes, so whether Killian wins, loses, or even survives the tournament is left open within Volume 01. Not a claim to make either way.

The Adventures: Volume 02

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