Higgs Monaghan

Higgs Monaghan's powers and abilities

Higgs was raised by his uncle early in his life after both of his parents died. He grew up thinking the shelter was the entire world, and his uncle would beat him whenever he asked about the outside world or tried to leave the shelter. Higgs would eventually kill his uncle in self-defense with a knife and witness the body going necro. Higgs took the corpse out and felt the Beached Things slowly approaching, unknowingly gaining his DOOMS in the process. In time, he would find out that his powers were triggered by death.

To stay alive, Higgs became a porter, being the only job he could do to survive. One time, he delivered medicine to a prepper living close to him only to find that he had died. It was too late to take the body to an incinerator. Instead, he took it to BT territory, where he started feeling the BTs reacting to the corpse and began having visions of the Beach, leaving Higgs to wonder if he had DOOMS. Eventually Higgs begin to make a name for himself thanks to his hard work as a porter. He was offered a position in a delivery outfit out west that operated outside Bridges' sphere of influence, for expanding their operations.

The head of the outfit who recognized Higgs talents and sought him out was a woman who called herself Coffin. She told Higgs that Bridges plan for rebuilding America involved the sacrifices of unborn children. The so-called BBs were being carted to some factory by the boatload to be slaughtered. Higgs learned that Coffin and her crew were behind the spike of recent terrorism in the region, but trusting her words, he decided to follow her lead in secret.

Coffin, who begin to consider Higgs her son, would give him military training and transmit her ideas, which would be fundamental in the young man's future. In addition, his DOOMS ability would be of vital importance for the mobility and survival of the group in BT's territory.

The end of the group came when they attacked a facility that was blown up by the UCA, killing almost all the rebels in the explosion. The survivors suffered terminal cancer due to the high concentration of chiral crystals in the area. Before going their separate ways, Coffin gave Higgs a mission: to save the BBs and put a stop to Bridges, to go to west, play the good porter a little while longer and eventually help Coffin's daughter, should the two ever cross paths.

Leaving his life as a rebel behind, Higgs came to enjoy helping people, being an essential part of a community, defying his adoptive father's teachings about caring only about oneself. However, when he was unable to help one of his porter partners that was calling for help lost in the mountains, Higgs began to question his powers to detect BTs because he felt them dwindling. Simultaneously, Higgs began reading a book called Wisdom of the Egyptians, about how the ancient Egyptians' concepts of life and death seemed to predict the changes brought on by the Death Stranding. Borrowing from the old pharaohs' wisdom, he began to wear a golden death mask, "but one for living—for ruling".

With the increase of terrorist actions lead by the terrorist group in the region, Word is Demens, and rumors that Bridges was sending an expeditionary force out west to "facilitate the reconstruction of America", Higgs decided that is time to join up with Fragile Express, lead by Coffin's daughter Fragile, who also had great DOOMS powers. Together they planned to consolidate their operations throughout the whole continent, like what UCA planed. Higgs thought he was the only one suited for leading the people and bringing them a new free and united world.