Arty Davidson / 'Impact'
Frederick Arthur ’Arty’ Davidson III
| {Age} |28
| {Species} |Meta-human
| {Gender} |Male
| {Appearance} |A bit over 6’, and pushing 185 lbs, Arty is built a bit like a refrigerator; broad shoulders, wide hips and thick pillars of muscle for arms and legs. He works out on a regular basis to keep himself fit enough to keep up with lifestyle; all-in-all he’s a bit of a slab of muscles. He’s got quite a few tattoos, some with meaning, some just because. Despite his size and bulk he’s remarkably flexible, something he’s taken great care in achieving to facilitate his rock climbing. When not either racing or wrenching, he’s a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy, looking very much like the gear head he is.
| {Equipment and Personal Belongings} || {Physical Abilities} |Muay Thai combatant - Having been in training since he was fifteen, he’s now a black belt and could be a certified instructor, if he ever gets around to it.
Mechanic - Turning wrenches since he was little, at his sister’s insistence he’s gotten himself ASE certified.
Free Runner
Auto/Motorcycle racer
| {Superpowers} |In the most basic terms, he’s a kinetic ‘battery’. He can absorb the force of a physical impact and either redirect in back out as a strike of his own (Punch, kick etc), or assuming it’s not too hard a blow and he doesn’t throw a strike, he will absorb the energy. Doing so can boost things like his strength, speed or reaction, or increase his ability to heal. As it stands, his ability to absorb energy is an automatic response and not something he has control over.
| {Limitations} |The biggest drawback is that his powers have no effect on any other form of energy (Thermal, electrical, chemical etc); if he gets hit by anything along those lines, he’s no more durable than any other human.
Running a close second, is that there is a definite limit to how much energy he can ‘store’ at a given point without releasing it. This ‘overload’ causes him to expel all the energy in a omnidirectional blast that is directly proportional to how much energy he stored. While the blast is non-fatal, it will render him unconscious for a time, and depending on how large it is, it may cause other injuries.
| {Personality} |An easy going guy, Arty does his best to not let too much bother him and to keep a positive outlook. Coming from a lower middle class background, he learned to make do with what he had and that despite that, he still had it pretty good. Though not raised in a religious household, the prayer ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference’ always resonated with him, and is something he tries to live by.
All in all, Arty is someone who in quick to laugh, but slow to anger; though one surefire way to stoke his anger is to harm those around him. His father always told him to guard those around him, and to stand by his convictions; which was why it hurt him so much when he stood by his sister, and his own convictions and heard his own parents condemn both of them. His parents have tried to mend fences between them, but until they apologize to Gwen, he’s not interested.
| {Place of Origin} |Braeson Falls [Population 40 000]
A largish town outside of Kansas City, it is on the verge of being swallowed up by the expanding metropolis.
| {Background} |For the most part, before the STAR Labs accident, Arty’s life was uneventful, barring a major falling out between him and his parents. Growing up in the town of Braeson Falls, he learned to turn a wrench and race anything with a motor basically from the moment he could walk; his dad was mechanic by trade and drove/wrenched for a local amateur race team, and by the time he was 14, Arty was a driver as well.
In middle school he started to really fill out, but to the disappointment of some, he showed no interest in football, instead taking up Muay Thai and getting into free climbing and parkour. Despite his size he was quite fast and agile, something that would, and still does, catch opponents off guard in the ring. As with any hobbies like racing or free climbing/parkour, he had more than a few crashes or spills but they just fueled his need for adrenalin despite any resulting injuries; he spent 2 months in hospital when he was 17 after a nasty crash during a figure 8 race.
The falling out between him and his parents happened when he was 20; his older sister, Gwen, had been going to Columbia University for Business/Corporate law and had been in her final year. She’d come home during a break…and brought her new girlfriend with her. Their parents threw a fit and threw Gwen out of their house, and Arty followed his sister. He’d always known his folks were kind of conservative, but he’d thought they were better than that; neither he or Gwen have spoken to them since then.
Five years later, after working for various shops, he took a swing at opening his own modest little ‘single bay’ auto shop with a generous loan from his, now practicing corporate lawyer, sister. While technically it does have two bays, the other is full of his truck, bike and ‘home gym’. Though probably not legal, to keep his expenses down, he sleeps in the loft above the shop’s office. His shop “Columbus Park Automotive” quickly grew a reputation for good work at a fair price in the local low income area. From there his life was a string of wrenching on cars/trucks/bikes etc, Muay Thai training and parkour to keep fit, and occasionally driving for amateur race teams.
When the STAR Labs accident happened, like most people, it was merely a note in the news for a few days before other stuff pushed it from his mind. As the weeks went on however, he began to notice something was off; a dropped hammer on his foot didn’t hurt…or bounce when it hit him, when sparring every time he got hit it seemed to energize him surprising his opponent, and himself, when a much stronger knee strike than he’d intended (he still felt like an ass for that). Though he still hadn’t made the connection to STAR Labs, it was about 5 months after the explosion that he came to realize he had ‘powers’.
Heading home on foot after a few beers at a local bar, he ended up rounding a corner and interrupting a mugging. Two local thugs were beating on a third man as he came around; the thugs caught Arty off guard and threw a punch at his head before he realized exactly what was going on. His training let him ‘tank’ that hit, but when the same thug threw his second punch, both he and Arty were surprised when it connected and stopped cold with no effect. Arty felt the same ‘surge’ as when he got hit in sparring, this time though, he replied with an elbow strike intending to do damage. The guy he hit was out cold before he hit the ground 6 feet from where he’d been standing. Running in instinct Arty went on the offensive and the other thug was down in seconds.
After helping the victim, he went home and spent the night thinking about what had happened. What seemed like a foolish childhood idea when it first came to mind, grew stronger the more he thought about it and two days later he acted on it. Dressed in nondescript clothes from a second hand store, he went out the shop’s emergency exit with a bandanna over his face and into his neighborhood. The place had always had a pretty bad street crime problem, and now it seemed to be getting worse. In a week he stopped three more muggings, two hold-ups, a carjacking and a probable rape; though he doesn’t even like admitting it to himself, he’s having fun.
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