Background

Kentucky Derby was born and raised in a trailer park in Pensacola, on the Florida Panhandle, to a pair of 19 year olds who, evidently, could not be trusted to name a child. Her father Randall, a car mechanic himself raised by a failed horse jockey, was obsessed with the concept of speed and everything it entailed, working seasonally in his 20s as a stock car mechanic for a relatively unknown racer only to squander away what little income he made on horse racing, speeding tickets, and junker cars for the rest of the year. Despite his financial irresponsibility and questionable decisions however, Randy always always found time for his daughter, whom he eventually figured might be happier being called Kenny, taking her to every NASCAR race he worked, every horse race he gambled at, and, as a treat, letting her sit on his lap and pretend to drive as he did donuts in empty lots. In the summer of 1998, as the family was in South Carolina for the Busch Series, daisies began to sprout on the infield grass at Myrtle Beach Speedway despite upkeep, causing confusion among spectators and racers alike. Later that year, Dale Earnhardt Jr. would win his first Series on Ken’s 14th birthday. As the next NASCAR season was starting and the Derby family were celebrating in Daytona, all hell began to break loose. The series were cancelled as a mysterious sickness began to spread along the eastern seaboard, causing several racetracks to close. The family, deciding to stay in Daytona for the time being, watched as people, including tourists that had been forced to stay due to quarantines, began to get sick, attacking and biting anyone they saw. By summer, roots were erupting from the corpses, manipulating them like overgrown puppets. Randy’s first instinct was to gather a myriad of like minded fans, mechanics, and racers to storm the Daytona track, starting a riot and seizing various stock cars, trucks and RVs. With these cars, the nascent group would travel around Florida and the surrounding states, liberating the racehorses and stock cars of the state’s many racetracks, camping out under the stars and sleeping out of their now modified vehicles. Over the next two years, scavenging became scarcer. Tired of competing for food and gas with the countless looters in Florida, the group, now more of a gang than anything, came to the realization that they didn’t need to scavenge like vultures for their own supplies. They had weapons, they had vehicles, and they knew where those few with abundant supplies lived. So began the Daytona 4-95s, preying on anyone that dared settle along the interstates of Florida. Like vikings on the rivers of Europe, they came in like thunder, riding into settlements, torching them to the ground and taking what they needed or, if the locals were amenable, demanding tribute at gunpoint. If Randy was the raider king of the 4-95s, Kentucky was its rugged princess. Already a delinquent, having been kept in jail overnight by various town sheriffs for theft and vandalism, Kenny took to the raider lifestyle and its vices like a duck takes to water. Even at sixteen, she was already cracking safes while her gang held up the same sheriffs and shopkeepers that held her only a few years prior, and working on her car's engine. By eighteen, she was riding into town on horseback with a torch in her hand, ready to burn down police stations that had already been hastily rebuilt with plywood. Naturally, this life full of escapades comes with its downsides. Despite her jovial and friendly nature, Kentucky became arrogant, violent and reckless, almost casually so. If it weren’t for the implication of the gang’s retaliation, she likely would have been hanged already for her countless one-man robberies, hold-ups, and ambushes. By her 20s, Kenny was knee deep in a drug problem her own arrogance had convinced her she’d be immune to. Eventually, one morning in 2007, the people of the Florida Communities had had enough. A scout from New Miami had accidentally come across the 4-95s’ camp in a long abandoned golf course near Disney World and brought the information back to his superiors. In the span of three days, a coalition was formed to hunt down the gang, with one particular sheriff, a certain Ronald Simmons, Randy’s brother in law and Kenny’s uncle, at its head. The coalition forces surrounded the camp and, following a short shootout and tense negotiation, whether from nostalgia, mercy, or concern for his sister Casey, Simmons chose to spare the 4-95s, driving them out of the Communities’ borders with a hefty and expensive escort to make sure they didn’t get up to any trouble on their way out. The 4-95s, newly exiled by a people who, surprisingly, were not fans of being robbed and exploited, naively assumed they would be welcomed into the Mississippi Marauders with open arms for their past exploits. After several days of driving through Alabama without any sightings whatsoever, the gang were caught in yet another ambush, this time by the very people they were hoping to join. The Marauders had nothing but disdain for the gang’s weakness following their exile, and saw them as nothing more than lackluster competition that needed crushing. Most of the gang, including Ken's parents, were killed that day, left to rot in the dirt or tossed in a nearby river. Their cars, their horses, everything that made the 4-95s what they are, were taken by the Marauders as trophies. Kentucky led what few survivors were left out of Alabama and into Tennessee, with the hope of reviving the gang in Central Coalition territory, but the mangled corpse of the 4-95s was too tired to fight. The gang parted ways after a feast of mourning for the lost, leaving Kenny to wander northbound until she reached the Ohio River. Left with no choice, she let her thoroughbred free to graze on the grasslands of her namesake and spent her last bit of money on a boat heading east, getting kicked off disorderly conduct at the Northbank QZ.