[hider=Gant d'Argent] Birth Name: Ulysse Descombes Alter Ego: Gant d'Argent/ Silver Glove Gender: Male Age: 33 Country of Operation: France (the city of Lille) Archetype: Gifted Allegiance: Champions Appearance: Ulysse is a heavily muscled Caucasian man standing an even six feet. He has brown eyes and keeps his head shaven (somebody might pull his hair in a fight). His “work outfit” is lightweight and simple- dark blue, tight-fitting cotton trousers and a sleeveless shirt to allow ease of movement. Ulysse formerly wore a mask, but ditched it and made his identity public on joining the Champions. He wears weighted boots and metallic sliver gloves on both hands. Skills: Gant d'Argent possesses no superhuman abilities of any kind. However, he is a martial arts expert of some renown. While he is well-trained in several disciplines (including judo, shotokan karate, krav maga, and hapkido) he prefers to fight with savate. In savate, he is one of the world's top practitioners. His intensive physical training gives him exceptional (but human-level) strength, agility, stamina, and pain tolerance. Equipment/Resources: Gant d'Argent routinely only carries two (or technically four) weapons, meant solely to augment his martial arts skills. His boots contain lead weights and steel plating in the soles and toes to add force to his kicks, and lead shot in sewn into the knuckles of his gloves to do the same for his punches. For particularly large battles, he may wear a kevlar vest and steel helmet, though he hates weighing himself down. Finally, he has a small fortune in savings from his kickboxing days, waiting for a rainy day. Biography: Ulysse Descombes is not a particularly well-educated man. He focused little on school as a child growing up in Lille, but excelled at athletics. Rather than being a stereotypical musclehead, though, he earnestly believed in sportsmanship, fair play, and an equal chance for everyone. He got into savate as a teenager, and found a sport he was even better at than football, tennis, or any of the others. Savate became his passion in life. Rather than attend college (much to his family's disappointment) Descombes instead chose to become a professional savatuer, competing as a heavyweight. His diligent hours of training and natural talent were paid off, as he won victory after victory, rapidly gaining the title of Silver Glove: the highest rank and honor in the savate community. However, there was plenty of seedier stuff in the savate community, underhanded practices that threatened the integrity of the sport and rankled with Ulysse's notions of honor and sportsmanship. Match fixing, doping, illegal gambling- all prevented up-and-comers from having a fair chance at success. Finally, Ulysse had enough. He donned a mask to protect his identity and took it upon himself to clean up the sport, under the name Gant d'Argent- Silver Glove. The steroids dealers, the fixers, the crooked managers- their thugs were given punitive beatings and the bosses chased out of Lille. Ulysse found he enjoyed both the new challenge and the rush of doing good, and soon expanded the scope of Gant d'Argent. Gangs, drug dealers, violent criminals, even a few low-level supervillains soon felt the sting of his fists and feet. He enjoyed a high success rate and national recognition. When the Champions initiative was announced, he was among the first volunteers, giddy at the prospect of working with his peers. He felt so strongly that he went public with his identity Though the reality was less harmonious than he might have imagined, he still believed firmly that the Champions were a force for the equality and fair play he firmly believed in. He largely ignored the problems within the group, instead remaining mission-focused. In Nagoya, he initially viewed the operation as just another fight, even when surprise was lost and bullets (and cars, and bolts of energy, and fireballs, and spells) starting flying. In fact, Gant d'Argent was rather enjoying himself, testing his martial arts skills against those of several of the gangsters. Then the building fell down on top of him. Miraculously, he only got a few cuts and bruises, not serious injuries. But he was trapped in darkness and unable to move for hours, unsure of what was going on above him, whether his teammates were winning or losing the battle, whether anyone was coming for him. For the first time, Ulysse Descombes felt pure and unrestrained terror. He remembers screaming until he blacked out, and then being lifted from the wreckage by firefighters, only to immediately be put on a plane out of the country. He had to learn from CNN about things that happened six feet above his head. Gant d'Argent was horrified at the scope of the destruction, but also at the accusations thrown at the Champions. Stubbornly, he still believed in the mission of the Champions even as teammates expressed doubt. He at least had one fact to cling to- the destruction was not his fault personally. When the walkout happened, Gant d'Argent was one of those who chose to remain behind. He does not regret this choice, and feels that continued service with the Champions will redeem their name and help assuage his recurring nightmares of being buried alive. Not to mention dreams of still worse things. [/hider] [hider= Red Jack] Birth Name: Jack Cochran Alter Ego: Red Jack Gender: Male Age: Physically in his late teens or early twenties, actual age thirty, and he'll look that young for a long time Country of Origin: America, East Coast Archetype: Supernatural Allegiance: Splinter Appearance: Red Jack is a tall broad shouldered man with sculpted features. He has perfect white teeth and the picture perfect musculature of a model. Those alone would make him a beautiful man, but his natural violet eyes and silver hair with his soft caramel skin give him an exotic almost ethereal allure. When enraged or in the joy of battle, his eyes turn a starling blood red. His ears are subtly pointed. In combat he wears black unicorn fur with minimal fae steel plating and a red head wrap covering his face and neck. When he kills a particularly worthy foe he dips his scarf in their blood. The original color of the scarf is unknown. Powers/Skills: Red Jack is a painter who only uses one color, guess which. Red Jack is a talented killer who trained in combat since he could hold a blade. He prefers to use his custom forged fae steel hand-and-a-half sword in tandem with a Desert Eagle in combat. Jack also likes his knives, carrying a variety of blades hidden on his person, there's always one in reach of his hand ready to fling into an opponent. He is stronger, faster, and more durable than a normal human due to his fae heritage. Jack has very subtle powers of persuasion, able to mentally nudge people into whatever emotional direction he desires. When enraged or damaged enough Jack will fly into a killer rage, his speed and strength are even greater but he becomes a beast that can barely distinguish between friend or foe. He hates being in this state, preferring to fight with his usual deadly grace and skill. His inhuman powers are also his curse, Jack deals with barely restrained urges for blood and violence on a daily basis. Equipment/Resources: A set of custom-fitted fabric and armor. The fabric is made from unicorn skin and is soft and supple to the touch. While the metal is intricately made fae steel with elegant curving patterns in the metal. The tight black leather doublet and breeches covers his whole body while the silver armor protects his upper arms, forearms, shins, and chest. The leather is enchanted and will completely stop knives and small arms fire up to military grade assault rifles. The armor will deflect most blunt force blows and provides protection from energy attacks, magical and otherwise. He wears red fingerless gloves and footwraps. His scarf is a family heirloom, worn by his father and his father before him down a long bloody line of Redcaps. Jack also has an enormous amount of blades on his person, including two wrist mounted hidden knives. Jack goes to battle with his bastard sword strapped to his back and his nickle plated, ivory handled hand cannon strapped to his thigh. The bloody armored helm of his family is affixed to his breast in his pin, a symbol of his status which allows him to access his family's considerable resources. Biography: Jack is the second son in a family of faeries. His mother was a woodland sprite and his father is a Redcap, a fae with a genetic predisposition for murder. Their coupling was passionate but brief as the nature of Fae encounters often was and Jack was born in one of New York City's many "Shadow Towns", hidden communities of supernatural beings living among mortals. His mother was a city dweller inconstantly and preferred to spend time in her beloved woods upstate, taking her son with him and teaching him of the beauty of life and nature. Her father, the clan chief, however did not want to raise a Red Son among his people and sent Jack off to live with his father. Jack's formative years were spent on Cochran Manor in upstate New York. His father, a prolific Winter Court assassin, took an interest in his strong son, for he only had one other son among many daughters and said older brother was a more bookish sort. His mother occasionally came to call on him at the manor, and one year he had a full-blood sister, his favorite sibling. Jack received the finest instruction in all the myriad arts of combat and killing. He grew up the favorite child, with every luxury and none of the responsibility of being his father's heir. As soon as he hit puberty he began feeling the murderous urges, only barely balanced out by the more gentle nature of his mother's people. Jack followed in his father's footsteps and slaked his lust for blood by pursuing countless liaisons with beings of multiple races. He became his father's apprentice, accompanying him on several of his contracts for both Winter Courtesans and other beings supernatural and mortal. Jack gained quite a few notches on his built and scratches on his bedpost before he reached twenty. Jack acquired the name Red Jack in the annual Winter Court tourney, where he won in a melee that had Winter Knights, Orges, and Trolls. Jack became quite infamous among his kin, his bloodlust and actual lust legendary even for their family. His mother's clan for the most part shunned him, his violent nature making him anathema to the clan's pacifistic philosophy. For her part his mother did her best to balance out her son. Red Jack begun taking contracts on his own, his mother's teachings and sensibilities compelling him to only seek violence against those he deemed despicable. It wasn't perfect but it was something. Jack's life went like that for years, killing anonymous hordes and having strings of anonymous lovers. When their shadow world exploded into the public eye with the rise of the superheroes, Jack received a much needed shot in the arm. He was one of the first Fae to embrace public life and became a "superhero", his looks and charm endearing him in the public eye while he amassed a reputation as a skilled fighter. He was a team leader in the Champions and one of their best field operatives. He filled another role that only him and a handful of Champions knew about. Jack was the team's personal hatchet man, taking care of problems in a way that no other Champion could. Whenever there was too much red tape to take someone down legally, whenever they were too much of a threat to remain alive, or whenever plain old revenge was needed, Red Jack was the solution. Nobody outside of the team and very very few inside knew about his role. Jack left no evidence linking the incidents back to them, and Jack had "disappeared" a handful of criminals in the group's short history. Jack's occasional wetwork coupled with bedding rabid fans kept his urges in check. He assuaged his desire for a noble life through his superheroics and he made quite a few friends and bed mates among his colleagues in the Champions. Nagoya was where things stopped being fun. For his part, Jack didn't contribute to the operation breaking down but he was in the thick of the fighting that came afterward. He lost too many friends that day and over the course of the battle, he started to lose it, taking wounds and becoming more brutal in his takedowns. Eventually he slipped into the blood rage and went on a rampage, slashing necks and stabbing criminals indiscriminately. His final body count was somewhere in the low dozens. Luckily for him his allies knew what was going on and steered civilians away from him and steered clear of his vicinity as he did his bloody work. The camera footage of the affair was quite frightening, with him laughing and yelling and perhaps even moaning in arousal as he snapped necks and ripped out throats. A few of them had tried to surrender. The whole affair was a red haze to him, he remembered almost none of it. The public backlash that followed angered him even further. Who were the humans to blame him and his friends for the affair? They were ungrateful, moronic, disgusting. Some of the Champions were almost as bad in their arguments. Jack scoffed at the idea of facing legal action and forcibly removed any authorities who tried. His days were filled with frantic damage control and arguments and public censure while his nights were haunted by frustrated lovemaking and vivid nightmares. Eventually Jack just couldn't take it anymore and promptly led the Splinter movement to break off from the Champions, seeking to start over fresh. Jack's goal is to do what the Champions can't and hunt down the criminal groups he believes responsible for the massacre, seeking to brutally destroy those organizations from top to bottom and damn the consequences. Special Notes: Jack is openly pansexual and not shy about it. Pursuing his sexual desires helps to alleviate his violent ones. He has quite a few bastard children living in the manor, he tries to show up for birthdays. [/hider]