Solar Crusher
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| [[Image:|300px|]] | |
| The Solar Crusher | |
| Player: User:Puddington | |
| Origin: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Scrapper |
| Security Level: | 29 and rising |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | John Doe |
| Known Aliases: | Axel, Philip Marlowe |
| Species: | Remodeled Human |
| Age: | 20something |
| Height: | 6'0" |
| Weight: | 300lbs (cybernetics) |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Japanese American |
| Occupation: | Superhero / Private Investigator |
| Place of Birth: | Unknown |
| Base of Operations: | Unknown |
| Marital Status: | Unknown |
| Known Relatives: | Unknown |
| Known Powers | |
| Internal fusion reactor and bionics | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Superhuman speed and agility | |
| Equipment | |
| ' | |
| ' | |
The Solar Crusher is my homage to the Kamen Rider franchise. I wanted to capture the sort of story that the series told during its roots in the 1970s, but with the more modern aesthetic properties of the Heisei era, all rolled into a package that fits in with the CoX universe and isn't a giant, glaring rip-off. And so:
Surgically remodeled under involuntary circumstances, a living John Doe investigates his origins and tries to avenge the death of his original self at the hands of a mysterious organization. Granted incredible powers, he fights for justice and tries to learn the terrible secret that lies beneath the surface of the city of heroes... and to hide his identity, he wears a mask~
Contents |
Affiliations
The Solar Crusher is a member of The Abandoned Warehouse, and seems convinced that he was once an employee of Crey Industries.
Origin
One day, an armored metal pod fell from the sky, crashing destructively into the reconstruction site at Faultline. An figure clad in white and orange armor emerged from the rubble, and was promptly beaten half to death by Mirror Spirit and the horde of heroes surrounding her. He didn't fight back much, and when he started saying things like, "Stop! What's going on?" and "Where am I? Who are you people?", the trainer called off her students. The strange, whiny being was handed over to Hero Corps for examination and identification.
Hero Corps' doctors tried to get some useful information out of him while they scanned his armor and body, but the man had severe amnesia. Later, after they managed to get his armor to.. dismiss, they were able to verify that he had suffered head trauma during the crash into Faultline. They were also able to take a look at his body, and come to unfortunate conclusions: in the end, Hero Corps sent him out the door with a loan to get him on his feet, and papers in the name of "John Doe," due to his lack of fingerprints, dental records, or DNA database hits.
The doctors also learned some interesting things. Somebody had really gone to town on John's body. He practically didn't have internal organs any more; his abdominal cavity was dominated by a small, working fusion reactor. His bones and muscles were reinforced with cybernetics, and patches of his skin were actually hidden ports for some external hardware, presumably the armor he arrived in. His brain was a mess: a sizeable portion of it had been replaced with some kind of artificial lobe, which itself appeared to have been damaged- perhaps either causing his amnesia due to damage, or meant to block his memories in the first place.
In the end, John Doe spent several weeks working closely with Hero Corps. He showed aptitude for detective work and fighting. He found that, by raising and lowering his core temperature, he could summon and dismiss his armor. This armor could rearrange and interface with his body in ways that made him faster, stronger, and able to vent weaponized reactor plasma through his knuckles and outer manifolds. He could remember a lot of cultural background details, but could not recall his name or any specific details of his life from before his arrival in Faultline... mostly. For some reason, he felt a certain... "connection" with Crey Industries...
He obsessed over the company. He thought that maybe he used to work for them, and that they made him into a cyborg with the intent to attack the city. Despite lack of markings or serial numbers on his cybernetics to link him to Crey, and Crey's own insistence that they did not have access to a fusion reactor that fits in a human torso, as well as evidence they provided to show that he was launched from a ship bearing Council markings in international waters, he continued to insist that Crey had abducted him and submitted him to involuntary surgery to turn him into a superweapon. He cited the unusual presence of Paragon Protectors in Faultline the day he appeared as his evidence that he was meant to be a staged nemesis for them, to raise their popularity against allegations of illegal cloning. This was the beginning of John Doe's obsession with Crey Industries, and marked him with a reputation in Hero Corps as an unreasonable conspiracy nut. Shortly afterwards, he cut off his formal ties with the Corps- he didn't want to be held back by some corporation's agenda in his search for the truth about his identity and Crey's conspiracy to rule the world.
Powers and Abilities
Armored Form
Through a mechanism that resembles some recorded forms of teleportation, an array of devices in Solar Crusher's body is able to harness his internal reactor to form a complex suit of armor around his body out of a semi-destructive display of thermal and electric phenomena. This process exposes a lot of his bionic hardware, which is enclosed by and interfaced to the armor. In this form, triggered by increased activity in his reactor, Solar Crusher is capable of superhuman speed. Jet thrusters and high-performance motors allow him to break the sound barrier on the ground, dodging bullets and moving so fast that most people don't even see him pass. This form also rearranges his hardware a bit, and lets him vent deadly bursts of plasma out of his hands and feet.
Human Form
By reducing the temperature of his reactor, Solar Crusher can dismiss his armor and hide his cyborg nature, taking on the form of a normal-looking guy. In this form, he still possesses unusual strength and agility, but can't achieve super speed or punch people with white hot, electric fury. This is the form he prefers to use when he needs to be social, even with other superpeople. He likes to be unassuming if he's trying to get information about possible leads in his many ongoing investigations, and the other conspiracy theorists out there don't much like giving information to a masked man.
General Impressions
John Doe, or Axel, as a lot of people seem to insist on calling him, is convinced that he was turned into a cyborg as part of the rumored Revenant Hero Project, maybe as some attempt by Crey Technologies to prove that they can make their own superperson. Despite his best efforts, John has yet to find any solid link between Crey Industries and himself, or even any irrefutable evidence of the Revenant Hero Project. He did, however, save the city from being subjected to mind control waves being carried within AM radio signals. Disappointingly for him, at least, it was an Arachnos plot. Solar Crusher is a guy who is ready to believe you. He thinks that something deep in the roots of society has gone rotten, and that the world is a messed up place. Really messed up. Rikti War was an inside job messed up. He makes it his business to discover the truth behind all sorts of fringe theories about the world and its dangers, and understandably this makes him very popular and/or infamous on the internet. That said, he usually jumps straight to the conclusion of "IT WAS CREY," and then has to revise his notes when he finds out that it wasn't. OR WAS IT?
Often exclaims, "Henshin!" when he summons his armor, even though he doesn't seem to otherwise understand a word of Japanese.
Stories
The Abandoned Warehouse
John Doe left Hero Corps at the first opportunity. Their relationship with Crey Industries could only stand to hurt his goal of exposing Crey's insidious plot... whatever it happened to be. At any rate, it would make it hard for him to recover his identity from them. He realized that there was no way he would be able to expose the Revenant Hero Project and save the world from nonspecific varieties of corporate enslavement with his tiny apartment and almost nonexistent income, though. He still needed an organization behind him. His research led him to Erik Jameson, a super-powered, genius adventurer of some note, and his veritable private army of high tech heroes. An organization that was almost completely independent, impartial in its dispensation of justice. The Abandoned Warehouse was located in a fortified warehouse at the edge of Paragon City, fortified with supertechnology that was decades ahead of anything in the public market...
Justice Advocate gave him an encrypted communicator and a key to the facility practically without a second glance. John was initially confused about that, as it seemed like it should be a grievous breach of protocol. He's since been swept into a near constant stream of insanity and mostly unwelcome surprises, and, in retrospect, the almost total lack of security in the Warehouse's recruiting process was really less of a red flag than the pack of maniacs he found living and working there when he arrived. Solar Crusher has stuck with the group, though, even though they insist on calling him "Axel" and make fun of his theories about AM radio and (mouse) truth serum in the diet soda. In the end, he's gotten some good results there, and he'd rather be on their side than risk ever making any of their "enemy" lists.
AM RADIO!
AAAAAGH. AM RADIOOOOooo... Mind control rays in the AM radio.
What started as a routine patrol on Striga Isle led the Solar Crusher onto a new case for his conspiracy files. The usual legwork turned up a couple of leads on that particular day: something was disrupting radio signals in Port Noble, and something was causing the citizens there to have headaches and night terrors. Appraising the situation, John decided that he wanted no part of fighting (probably) magical nightmare demons. He opted to track down the jerk who was causing radio interference, instead. Borrowing some equipment from the Talos Island Police HQ, he managed to track the interference to a small facility at the edge of the Port. Guarded by men dressed like they were trying to look like Sky Raiders, scientists were monitoring incoming radio signals from a dish on the roof, and trying to map them onto brain region models. Solar Crusher didn't like the look of the situation at all, but he didn't want to tangle with the small army of guards and risk blowing his cover. Rushing through the lab at a nigh-invisible speed, he grabbed a few discs that were lying around.
Disturbing Implications
The discs were heavily encrypted, but John Doe had developed ties with a number of individuals in circles focused on delving into the dark secrets under society. Political corruption, misuses of authority, corporate immorality, the flouridation of water... topics that require investigation and a bit of espionage. In the end, his informants could only pick a few documents out of the discs, but, together with what he saw in the Striga facility, the truth was clear: Somebody (CREY!) had discovered a way to propogate a type of mind-scanning beam across the vector of AM radio signals. Clever, he thought, nobody ever listens to AM radio; an unusual signal could go practically unnoticed. Solar Crusher panicked. He knocked out a couple of radio tranceivers, but was forced to stop when the police took notice. Paragon Protectors, too, he noted with some amount of satisfaction. Definitely a Crey plot. Still, he couldn't go wrecking infrastructure without evidence. Perhaps a quieter investigation was still necessary.
Results!
Solar Crusher's decision to join the Abandoned Warehouse had good points and not so good points. He was able to set the advanced computer there to work scanning the AM radio bands for atypical signals easily enough, and was confident that it would give him results within a day or two. Most of the other heroes there scoffed at the theory, though, especially because he didn't want to compromise his investigation by revealing details of his discovery at Striga. In the end, the computer found what he was looking for: a complex, repeating wave disguised as static on an unused channel. Practically pissing himself with excitement, he carried the data to a colleague at Steel Canyon's university campus for further analysis and tracing.
Not a Crey plot
Dragonhawk16, Solar Crusher's choice for the analysis of signals (guy discovered subliminal Scientological evangelism in satellite TV image artifacts, a fact still denied by all service providers), came to him two days later with an address in Skyway City, and disturbing news: the signal was being mixed with some kind of directional microwave beam from that building, and the resulting interference wave was, at certain points, a focused electromagnetic field keyed to human brainwave patterns. Solar Crusher finally had somebody to catch in the act: he was ready to blow the lid off of this thing, and just in time: Positron had finally caught up with him about those tranceivers he wrecked. John Doe had just this one chance to justify his actions earlier in the week, or he would be arrested.
He rounded up Dantian and Roy from the Warehouse, and together they attacked the office marked by Dragonhawk16. When he saw what was going on inside, John Doe was crushed... it wasn't a Crey plot to read the citizens' minds at all.
It was an Arachnos plot, instead! After the whole mess was cleaned up, data on the discs, documents, and computers in the facility would reveal that Dr. Phineas Welles, the administrator there, was sent to Paragon with a detachment of men by Lord Recluse. The plan was to find a way to hide a low-energy signal based on analysis of Dr. Aeon's ARC Data Stream in Paragon's airwaves. The last few weeks of activity had merely been calibration, timed to coincide the presence of unusual signals with the approaching annual breach of the Hallow's Veil. The real plan was to strike people all over Paragon City with a data stream that would override their reality with a false one, causing them to riot and turn against their heroes. Solar Crusher, and his amazing friends, had saved the city!
Positron was flabbergasted that Solar Crusher's seemingly insane ranting about AM radio had basis in fact. He promised that he would get other heroes on top of cleaning up the remains of the operation, and in the end, nobody had to carry out a community service sentence for wrecking any radio antennae. For John Doe, however, it was a Pyhrric victory: he was no closer to breaking the Crey case than he was before.
