Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters that originally appeared in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". More's the pity.
Frank N. Furter sat in his office at the College of Denton, idly looking out the window. He was ready for the start of the new school year, with its new crop of students and new courses to teach. This particular semester, one class he was teaching was freshman chemistry. Normally, such courses were left to the teaching assistants. However, the dean had noticed Frank's rapport with his students, and assigned the class to him in hopes he could encourage more students to pursue the sciences during their college careers. Frank didn't object; while the elementary level of the subject matter would be less than interesting for him, he imagined the challenge of trying to reach a group of students who were, for the most part, there solely to fulfill a science requirement – as opposed to the dedicated upperclassmen and graduate students he normally taught – would bring a fascination of its own.
He was surprised to find he genuinely enjoyed teaching. He was even more surprised to find himself actually adapting to being a permanent resident of Earth, with no ties to his home planet or any hopes of ever returning there. He knew the Earth mission had been scheduled to end shortly after the uprising at the castle, with Transylvanian operatives all over the world going home to report their findings to the Queen and her court advisors. He supposed the news of his "death" had caused a furor, especially with his mother – the Queen herself. However, he was sure Riff Raff and Magenta had come up with a convincing story to explain his demise, although undoubtedly their discovery of the disappearance of his body had caused them considerable unease. At least he dearly hoped so.
The memory of that night, two years ago now, still stung. Frank had completely fallen apart when Riff Raff faced him with that laser, and his terror only grew after the man killed poor, sweet Columbia. In his frenzied state, he attempted to escape by climbing the curtain, but quickly saw that plan was doomed to failure. Before he could fully digest that unhappy thought, a jolt of anti-matter hit him squarely in the back, with the brutal force of a rifle shot at close range. The pain, unimaginable in its intensity, caused him to scream, then – mercifully – black out. When he regained consciousness, moments later, he was lying on the floor, with Rocky cradling his body and bellowing in grief. As he felt Rocky pick him up, he could only wonder why he wasn't dead. Then it came to him…a childhood memory so traumatic he'd completely buried it, until this crisis dragged it out of his subconscious mind.
He was five years old. Much to his excitement, he was getting to visit the boot camp where Transylvania's most elite fighting force trained. He was turned over to the camp commander, a huge, imposing man named Derringer. Derringer also served as the chief of security for the royal family, and it was in this capacity that he took charge of young Frank. His first act was to tie the small boy to a pole in the camp's exercise yard. Frank laughed, thinking this was the beginning of a fun new game. He soon learned differently, as Derringer took a small laser in hand and, without warning, shot the helpless boy with it. The pain was excruciating. Frank, screaming and crying, begged to be untied. However, not only was he not set free, he was actually shot again…three more times, with an interval of about 15 minutes between shots. Only then was he released, exhausted from pain and fear, and returned to his personal bodyguard to be brought back to the palace. Nobody ever spoke of the events of that day; it was as if the whole ghastly episode had never happened. Now, years later, he finally realized what the true purpose of that horrifying afternoon had been. The royal family, due to its position and power, was the not-infrequent target of assassination threats. The shots of anti-matter, administered in controlled doses when his body was still early in its development, served as a kind of vaccine, protecting him against the killing effects of any later laser attacks he might suffer.
Frank's thoughts were rudely dragged back to the equally horrifying present, as Rocky began climbing that damn RKO tower, carrying him on his back. Riff Raff, in a rage, continued firing. Frank could feel the anti-matter whizzing by him, occasionally grazing an arm or a leg, but he was mostly unscathed. Rocky, unfortunately, was not so lucky. Frank heard him scream and felt the tower plummet toward the ground, dumping both Rocky and him into the pool's warm waters. Frank floated in the water, occasionally turning his head ever so slightly in order to get a breath of air, but otherwise still – hoping against hope that everyone believed him dead, and would leave him where he was. When he was finally left alone in the ballroom, he quickly climbed out of the pool, grabbed a robe and a gym bag he'd left backstage with some notebooks and the keys to his Denton apartment, and beat a hasty retreat before the castle took off on its voyage back to Transexual.
Why, yes, of course he had an apartment. He couldn't effectively study U.S. society while cloistered in his castle, so he had to create an alter ego who would live among the inhabitants of the small town outside of which the castle was nestled. The process was a lengthy and involved one. While the mission was being planned, it was decided he would be a science professor, to capitalize on his area of expertise. Naturally, in order to get a professorship, he would need the appropriate academic credentials. While some falsifying of documents would be unavoidable – a birth certificate, for example, and early school transcripts – Frank felt the fewer such forgeries, the more airtight his new identity would be. With the long life span of a Transylvanian working in his favor, and a suitably youthful appearance, one luxury he had was time. A Transylvanian agent was already in place in England, working in the registrar's office of a boarding school called Kingswood. He was able to create a transcript for Frank, which Frank used to be accepted to the University of Birmingham under the slightly amended name of Frank Furman. He majored in biochemistry, carefully working so that he excelled in his studies, but not to such a degree that he would attract suspicion or undue attention. He continued his graduate studies at the university, earning his PhD with the same level of careful academic excellence that had marked his undergraduate career. At that point, he left England and journeyed to the United States, to join the rest of his mission in the town of Denton…a town that, not coincidentally, had a small but distinguished college in search of a professor for its growing science department. The dean was delighted with the opportunity to get a young professor on the faculty, particularly one with such stellar credentials, and from that point on Frank spent Monday through Friday teaching at the college and living in an apartment near the campus. He returned to the castle each weekend, preparing the weekly report for his mission log, supervising Riff Raff and Magenta, and working on the research project dearest to his heart – the creation a of living, breathing, exceedingly muscular life form.
The years spent living so much of the time amongst Earthings had not really changed Frank, although he was – to use one of his own favorite words – adaptable enough to fit into the foreign Earth culture in a surprisingly convincing manner. However, it was never more than role-playing for him. The list of his advantages was seemingly endless. He was royalty, the adored, endlessly indulged son of Transylvania's queen. In addition, he was good-looking and brilliant, successful at everything he attempted, and so powerfully charismatic and charming that he would have been the center of attention even without his wealth and royal status. All of that, combined with an already abundant amount of self-confidence, combined to make him at times overbearing, thoughtless, autocratic and even cruel. Due to his position, he had never been forced to suffer the consequences of those rather unattractive aspects of his character…until That Night.
That Night changed everything, although it had taken some time. His first reaction, predictably enough, was fury at Riff Raff and Magenta's disloyalty and treachery. How dare they do such a thing to him! To HIM! It was incredible! And yet, as he thought about it, he realized…it wasn't so incredible after all. While on Transexual there was a wide circle of courtiers, hangers-on, friends and lovers on which to inflict his occasional tantrums and petulance, on Earth the burden was on Riff Raff, Magenta and the luckless Columbia to bear such treatment. Columbia, sadly for her, loved him enough to make excuses for his behavior, but Riff Raff and Magenta had no reason to harbor any warm feelings for him. He'd always recognized, in some vague fashion, that Riff Raff and Magenta resented him, but it had hardly mattered. After all, they were mere servants. Why should he care about their feelings? Unfortunately for him, they answered that question with a series of laser shots. And he was left alone.
Alone. That was one thing he'd never been, and it scared him. Even during his time at university in England, he'd always managed to keep in touch with his fellow Transylvanians, and thereby reassure himself about who he really was. He wasn't an anonymous college student; he was a prince. He was important. Those days were over. He realized, to his horror, he would have to make a life for himself on Earth, a life in which he wouldn't be royalty. He wouldn't be wealthy. He wouldn't be famous. He would just be…himself. So much of his self-image had been tied to those attributes that he wondered if he knew the person underneath anymore, or if that person was even worth knowing. Slowly, painstakingly, he came to understand the effect his behavior had on those around him, and he was filled with pain. However, as the pain eventually decreased, a new sense of freedom took its place. Not the familiar freedom to treat others thoughtlessly, but the freedom to make a life in which he wouldn't be burdened by the demands of royalty and of fame. And make no mistake, the burdens were real, even if he hadn't recognized them as such at the time. When around other people, even in the most intimate of circumstances, he'd always felt compelled to be larger than life, to be "on," to satisfy their image of what he should be. He couldn't ever be just another person…he couldn't be ordinary. He'd never thought about how much energy he had expended in his never-ending quest to live up to others' expectations of him. Now he could use that same energy to figure out what his own expectations of himself were. He knew that not all of his advantages had been taken from him; he still had his looks, his intelligence, and his charisma, along with an important new one – namely, empathy. And, fortunately, he had a base from which to work, his job at the college. The time had come to stop making himself larger than life…and to actually make a life for himself. He could do it. He'd always been successful before.
