'B.' stands for 'Be', but you ain't gonna know that

"So, what's the 'B' stand for?" Jack asked to pass the time when a week had passed in the skiff. She had her feet propped up on the console, slouching in the co-pilot seat, her arms crossed behind her head.

Riddick shot her a somewhat amused glance, catching Imam's interested forward-lean to hear his answer, before turning back to give the monitor a brief check. They hadn't run into anyone else yet, but since they were still in the Sol-Track Shipping Lanes since the skiff was much slower than a commercial ship, he wasn't about to let his guard down. "Finger to the fucker up there, kid."

He'd been found in a liquor store trash bin with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and left for dead. He'd been told someone had found him but couldn't take care of him, and he was dumped like another piece of trash into the foster care system, until he'd run away and joined a child gang that lived on the scraps of mercs. on Coalsack-4.

No parents, no home, no name.

They called him 'John Doe', like all the other John Does in the universe.

And he stuck with that name until one day, he passed by a group of people made up of a few families, following a priest to the nearby creek for baptism, arguing about names. Funny thing this planet – he learned that kids weren't named until they were baptized, if they were Christian.

"'John' means 'God is gracious' and 'Richard' means 'brave power'", one of the mothers said, flipping through what looked like a notebook. "'Riddick' sounds nice. I don't know what it means, but there's a motto that comes with the name. Tu ne ce-" The woman struggled with the foreign word. "-cede malis. Tu ne cede malis. It means 'yield not to misfortunes'. What do you think, Logan?"

He stopped following and fell back, cutting a sharp right to take a shortcut to the church he knew those people had just come from.

The church was empty. In this day and age of corporate greed and survival of the greediest, God had no place in this universe. So, he stood before the image of who he knew was Jesus in the Christian lore, his shiv out.

"Ain't no John Doe no more, you crazy fucker. 'Gracious' my ass." His voice was still young, only just starting to take on the characteristic growl that would be so recognized in the future. "Richard, because fuck you, and Riddick, 'cause I'm riddin' myself of you bein' a dick." A pause. "And just 'cause I like the motto." Another pause. "Dick be Rid-dick."

A smirk at the statue, a small cut of his knife across his finger, and he baptized himself.

Jack scrunched her face at him. She'd lost a large part of the somewhat fearful awe she had of him after he'd used the skiff to kill more bioraptors. "C'mon, Riddick."

She swore she was tempted to punch the smirk off of the man's face, only she knew that would be a bad idea.

"B. stands for 'be', kid, but you ain't gonna know that."