Difference between revisions of "Metamorph (Beta)"

Latest revision as of 05:10, 13 October 2012

Rudy "Metamorph" Cromwell is a mutant Loyalist in the services of Praetoria's Power's Division, serving the regime of Emperor Cole. Formerly a member of the Resistance, he turned on them after he could no longer stomach the deeds he was forced to undertake on their behalf.

Origin

Rudy Cromwell was a latent mutant from birth. His mother perished in childbirth, due to the complications of having a fifteen-pound baby. His father died in the Hamidon Wars at the age of sixteen, forcing Rudy to enter adult life early. People often picked on him about his size, but due to his fearsome strength, they never did so to his face. He discovered, as he aged, that he had an unusual 'sensitivity' to the biological processes going on in his own body, and those nearby, and with concentration, could affect them.

It wasn't until he was caught in a Destroyer attack that his powers blossomed fully. Threatened with the prospect of being beaten to death by the Fixadine-junkies, the stress drove young Rudy to the breaking point. His skin and flesh erupted outward into a carapace of superhumanly-tough bone and muscle, the biological exoskeleton amplifying his already-tremendous strength to unheard-of degrees. In a blind fit of panic, he plunged his hand into a nearby building, and ripped a girder straight out of the concrete. Wielding it like a club, he pummelled the Destroyers mercilessly until every last one of them was senseless or fleeing. To this day, he still has an affinity for wielding huge weapons instead of fighting barehanded.

It didn't take long for both the Praetoria Police Department and Powers Division to take notice - the intervention of the latter saving Rudy from being subjected to police brutality by the former. Given a Powers Division registration form, he was sent to Precinct 5 for orientation, and to help put a stop to a Resistance raid there. He took the nickname "Metamorph" after a PPD officer called him "some sort of metamorphic freak"; the name's since become a badge of pride for him.

Powers and Abilities

Chief among Rudy's powers is a level of bodily awareness and control that is unheard-of. Rudy is consciously aware of every single cell in his body, and can control each and every one, right down to telling them when to divide and when to undergo apoptosis. This ability grants him the ability to shape and re-shape his body as he wishes. Typically, he appears as an 8' 2", tal, heavily-built and broad-shouldered man with blonde hair and blue eyes, but he is capable of changing virtually any aspect of his appearance at will, including gender and even species.

In combat, Rudy will often exude a thick carapace of biological armor, which can deflect almost any personnel weapon and even survive blows from anti-tank weaponry. This armor, being made of his living flesh, regrows and heals rapidly from any damage inflicted on it, and serves as an exoskeleton to amplify his already-tremendous strength. His biological control also extends to those near him - he can sense the biological processes in other beings and adapt himself to their attacks based on what he learns. He can even leech vital energy from foes when hard-pressed, leaving them sluggish and sickly as he recovers rapidly.

Offensively, Rudy typically uses his enormous strength to wield massive two-handed weapons. He's been seen wielding improvised weaponry such as girders with concrete and railroad crossing signs, and when nothing is handy he is capable of extruding a giant two-handed axe made out of the same exoskeletal material as his armor. He has tremendous skill with these, and due to his ability to produce a weapon on-the-fly, he is never truly unarmed.

Rudy's unique condition makes him somewhat difficult for psychics to penetrate. Normal human minds are not intended to cope with mental contact with someone who is keenly aware of every last biological function going on in his body down to the cellular level. Even more disturbing is when Rudy is not only aware of his own body's functions, but also aware of the bodily functions of the one scanning his mind. The revelations of what is going on inside your own body and his simultaneously is often too disgusting for all but the strongest-willed psychics to bear, assuming the sheer information overload doesn't force them to break contact. When he wants to allow friendly psychic contact, he can push the biological information going through his mind out of his surface thoughts, but any attempt to probe beyond where he allows you will still be forced to penetrate past the glut of bio-info to get to anything worthwhile.

Weaknesses

Although his bio-armor is tough enough to shrug off rockets and bombs, and quickly adapts to whatever situation Rudy finds himself in, Rudy is far from invulnerable. Concentrated fire from anti-vehicular weapons may be able to take him down in sufficient volumes, although it is best to strike hard and early; the longer it takes to bring your full firepower to bear, the more likely his armor will have adapted to counter your choice of weapons. In addition, he is not particularly fast, nor does he have any means of attacking those outside of his immediate vicinity; dealing with him from a distance is highly recommended.

History

Rudy always had a hatred of authority. Particularly arbitrary authority; to him, anyone he didn't accept as leader of his own free will didn't have any right to boss him around. As a result, being drafted into Powers Division didn't sit well with him; he wanted out, and made that fact quite clear to Praetor Reese when the opportunity presented itself. He found his opportunity when he met the Resistance, including Rothstein, Wrencher, and Calvin Scott. They gave him an interesting proposal - operate within Powers Division, enjoying all the perks, but also feeding their secrets to the Resistance. Having no real love for Powers Division, he agreed to be the Resistance's inside-man.

Almost immediately, Rudy discovered that being in Powers Division put you on everybody's list. Even the PPD doesn't like you. This was fine by him; anyone who was stupid enough to stand up to him would be just another target for him to work his frustrations out on. Despite this though, the fundamental goodness within Rudy left him apalled at some of the things that the Resistance asked him to do, particularly leading mad packs of ghouls into populated areas, or using Seers as psychic bombs.

The final straw was the Neutron Bomb incident. The Resistance intended to detonate the bomb in the middle of the Magisterium, causing tremendous devastation, but due to interference from the PPD, were forced to detonate it in the tunnels below. Though he went through with the bomb plot, Rudy was so filled with hate for the Resistance that he jumped at the first chance to betray them, opting to crush the leaders of the Resistance's syndicate allies and turn them in to the PPD to get into the good graces of Powers Division.

Currently a Loyalist, Rudy has seen first hand the excesses of Emperor Cole's regime, and only wonders how long it'll be before they force his hand. If it were up to him, he'd destroy both sides of the problem, and establish his own utopia on the ruins of Praetoria. Right now, though, he's content to serve the Cole regime... so long as they don't push their luck.

Unfortunately, push their luck is exactly what they did. It never dawned on Metamorph just how absolutely crazed the other Praetors were, until he worked for Praetor Sinclair and Praetor Tilman. Praetor Sinclair proved to be an insane control freak, kidnapping people from their lives with no regard to their own wishes, forcing them to abandon their family and any previous relationships, and honing them into his own personal band of spec ops ninja-agents. Unable to stomach what they did with Belladonna Vetrano, Metamorph spared her, letting her escape and using the interference of the PPD as a cover-up to pull it off. Praetor Tilman was... something else. She put on the facade of a warm, loving mother, but her frequent outbursts more than hinted that it was merely an act. The deeds she asked him to do were the nail in the coffin; taking down Syndicate thugs that were killing Seers? That was okay. Taking down Beholder, who was a sickening madwoman turning Seers into psychic bombs, that was doable. Kidnapping two of these... otherworlder... psychics? Eh. But the last straw came when 'Mother' asked him to capture Vanessa DeVore, the psychic leader of the Carnival of Light and the potent protective force keeping the Resistance hidden from the Seer network. It was there that he learned what 'Mother' was really doing with her 'daughters'; psychically consuming them, body and soul, devouring them slowly to increase her own powers. 'Mother' was nothing more than a psychic parasite.

The thought of smothering control-freaks like Sinclair and Tilman in charge nearly threw Metamorph into a fit of rage. The neutron bomb was the act of a desperate man wanting to resort to any means to take down Cole's regime, and it almost paled in comparison to the long-term calculated evil of the Praetors. The extreme actions of the Crusaders genuinely started to make sense, now that he'd seen, firsthand, just what kind of monsters the Praetors truly were. Dedicating himself to the Resistance once more, Metamorph intends to overthrow the Cole regime by any means necessary, even if he has to break into the Tyrant's own tower and club him in the face personally.

In the meantime, he continued his work with the Resistance. He was apalled by the traitorous actions of Crow, and one group of otherworlders, the Arachnos, made it onto his blacklist by trying to blow up the Keyes Island reactors. But what terrified him the most was the revelation of the truth behind these otherworlders; this world, Primal Earth, was about to be invaded by Emperor Cole, and he'd established an army of giant robots called War Walkers to do it. This was the reason for Longbow and Arachnos's presence in this world.

With the War Walkers at his disposal, no force in Praetoria could hope to stand against Emperor Cole. But fortunately, there was a whole world of unrestricted, unrestrained supers who, if properly marshalled, could pull it off. To this end, Metamorph agreed to Calvin Scott & Steve Sheridan's last mad scheme; he would enter Paragon City, earn the trust of the Praetors' Primal Earth counterparts, and have them rally the heroes of Primal Earth to attack Praetoria preemptively, preemptively annihilating the War Walkers and deposing of Emperor Cole in one fell swoop.

But first, he'd have to adjust to life in a different world; a world that didn't trust him one bit for being from Praetorian Earth.

Unfortunately, Rudy seems to have disappeared while investigating his Primal Earth double. Nobody knows what has happened to him.