[hider=The Lion of Nova Scotia Returns] [img]https://s9.postimg.org/izkoookvj/champfont.png[/img] [u][b]Name:[/b][/u] Duncan Reid MacAodhan [u][b]Alias:[/b][/u] The Champion (AKA: The Hero of Halifax, The Lion of Nova Scotia and, due to an incident involving a [i]certain psychopathic time-traveler[/i] and a lack of pants, [i]The Canuck Cutie[/i]) [u][b]Age:[/b][/u] 24 [u][b]Personality:[/b][/u] Clever, Frank, Hard-nosed, Genre-Savvy, Big-hearted (even if he's hilariously ignorant of it) [u][b]Archetype:[/b][/u] Metahuman [u][b]Powers:[/b][/u] [b]Immense Physical Prowess-[/b] Duncan is, for lack of a better way of putting it, really goddamn strong... and fast... and pretty tough to boot, if the fact that he went toe-to-toe with freaking Metallo (who, in case we've all forgotten, is a super-powered murder-bot powered by magic space rocks strong enough to make Superman bleed) and was actually able to come out on top despite being absolutely rag-dolled across the ground and through several buildings by an opponent who actually [i]knew what he was doing[/i] is any indication. All that being said, it should be noted that though his metahuman genes put him well into the range of Kryptonian physical ability, Duncan... was a chainsmoking, borderline alcoholic who has never worked out or trained a single day in his entire goddamn life before he started doing the hero thing and as a result, was about as out of shape and weak as he could possibly be. After his time playing hero in Halifax and working with the league, however, he has become [i]far[/i] more powerful. Raising questions as to what the limit to his abilities may be. [u][b]Weaknesses:[/b][/u] While Duncan possesses Kryptonian levels of physical ability, he is still very much [i]human[/i]; He can't fly, he still needs to breathe, possesses no form of crazy eye-lasers or freezing breath and can't survive solely off sunlight. In fact, for simplicity's sake, here's a list of the kinds of things that can hurt and/or kill him just like any other guy. -Drowning. -Poison Gas. -Regular poison. -Electrocution. -Starvation. -Asphyxiation. -Dehydration. -Bleeding out. -Bleeding internally. -Food poisoning. -Heart-failure. -Liver-failure. -Kidney-failure. -Cancer. -Hypothermia. -Being thrown into the sun. -Being thrown into space in general. -Tamaranean Cooking. [u][b]Appearance:[/b][/u] [img]https://s9.postimg.org/4meqw072n/champ.png[/img] To read what Duncan is physically capable of, you might picture some sort of hulking mountain of a man with bulging muscles and a jawline chiseled from granite... to actually meet the man however, you'd be disappointed and maybe a little confused- MacAodhan is not a large man. In fact, compared to most in the League he is downright tiny, standing at only 5'6" on a good day and lacking the bulging, musclebound physique of proper superheroes in favour of a lean, though dense physique closer to that of an Olympic swimmer if anything, though his broad shoulders and calloused hands make a fairly decent indicator of his blue-collar background, to which he also owes the habit of shaving his brown hair into a buzzcut, to deal with the heat in his workplace. Though in the beginning of his sordid, surreal superhero career he had nothing more than a denim jacket, a ballcap and a rag tied over his face to hide his identity, he has since acquired an actual costume of his own; a sort of coming-of-age gift from the League, who knew the young man wasn't entirely keen on the whole concept of tights, capes and outer-underpants. With this in mind, they found a healthy balance; boots and a short-sleeved suit made of a heavy-duty version of the material Superman used for his own attire to stand up to the fact that, lacking flight, Duncan does a lot more skidding and smashing into things than the Big Blue Boyscout did, colored black and gold and bearing the Lion-Rampant of Scotland and Nova Scotia on his chest in red. Topping this off, in lieu of a cape, the Champion instead wears a brown jacket made of the same material (just, y'know... less [i]spandexy[/i]) for much the same reason, with a patch of the [url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Arms_of_Nova_Scotia.svg]arms of his home province[/url] sewn onto the back. He also wears a pair of black gloves, an eye-mask and, occasionally, a ballcap of some pub or sports team. The end result? Though The Lion no longer looks like just some random guy in a Canadian Tuxedo who punches murderous aliens, robots and alien robots in the face on the daily, he [i]is[/i] still instantly recognizable as the Hero of Halifax, all grown up but still tethered to his more modest origins. [u][b]Character Evolution:[/b][/u] A buddy-cop routine with another hero would be nice. But aside from that, I'd be happy to just go with the flow. [b]Hilarious misadventures, however, are still mandatory.[/b] [u][b]Altered History:[/b][/u] In this timeline, Superman never showed up in Halifax to help Duncan with Metallo... or, indeed, any of the deluge of villains that followed soon after until he finally managed to get himself caught up in World-Threatening levels of shit. He's also known Wildcat since he was a boy as "Uncle Ted", one of his Grampa's old wartime buddies from the States, though he had no idea about his alter-ego until he started teaching him how not to suck at this whole hero thing and help him out in Halifax. The end result? he's [i]far[/i] less the hapless Rookie he was in volume one. [u][b]Recommended Background Leaguer:[/b][/u] Cyborg [hider=A Not-So-Brief Bio] Despite what one might might assume when encountering literally [i]anyone[/i] even remotely associated with superpowers and tights, Duncan's tale is... rather mundane. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia with a Fisherman for a father and a mother who ran a local diner, the boy in question up grew extraordinarily normally; playing videogames, staying at his grandparents' when his mom was busy at the shop and his dad was out at sea and helping his granddad out in the garage fixing cars and the occasional boat. And then one day when he was fifteen, he got hit by a truck. After about a good ten seconds of screaming and another thirty spent wondering why he wasn't dead, he extricated himself from the big-rig's engine-block that had wrapped around both him and the streetlight he'd been leaning against only to find that not only was he [i]not dead[/i], he was [i]perfectly intact[/i]. All things considered, that's some pretty heavy shit to lay on a fifteen year old. So it's not all that surprising that when the (very) drunk trucker half staggered, half fell out of his truck at the sight of him, and sirens began echoing in the distance, the kid ran the hell out of there. A few days of trial, error and a lot of Wikipedia later, and the boy had a pretty good idea what all that was about: He was a Metahuman, a one-in-a-million carrier of a superhuman gene that may or may not activate under extreme stress (Like, for instance, [i]getting hit by a truck while waiting for the bus[/i]). Frankly, it sounded a lot like a bunch of pseudo-science crap you'd find in an old comic book, but lacking any other explanation for his sudden... talents... it was one he'd have to accept. Now, usually, when someone finds out they've got crazy superpowers, things usually go in one of two predictable ways; one, they become a spandex-clad boy-scout that dedicates every moment of every day to having the brightest smile, rescuing cats from trees and giving lectures about the dangers of "The Reefer" and sex before marriage or two; going full ham, burning orphanages, kicking puppies and generally being [i]real goddamn edgy[/i] just for the sake of it. Duncan to his credit, chose the rarely considered, often forgotten third option- [i]"Yeah... No. Fuck that."[/i] And so, despite the call to adventure literally screaming directly into his ears, Duncan carried on his life as normal; Growing up as normally as he possibly could- getting average grades, shoveling his grandparents' driveway in the wintertime, trying and failing several times at that whole romance thing and working through his apprenticeship as a diesel mechanic at the local shipyard after highschool. Unfortunately for him, as the old trope goes, [i]'The Call Knows Where you Live'[/i]. And one day while Duncan was just wrapping up his night-shift shortly after his twenty-first birthday, [i][b]Metallo[/b][/i] came bursting out of one of the shipping containers in the yard, raiding a docked cargo ship for... [i]something[/i] and then going on a rampage with speed and ferocity never shown on the news before. Despite having reservations about the whole 'Hero' thing, the one guy in town with the ability to intervene couldn't exactly sit idly by while a super-powered terminator powered by glowing space-rocks butchered his coworkers and leveled his town. So, throwing on a respirator to hide his face, the young man nutted up and went after the deranged cyborg... or, more accurately, spent the next hour on the receiving of a brutal beatdown at the hands of someone that was at least as strong, as fast and much, [i]much[/i] more experienced than he was at the time that was also incapable of feeling pain or fatigue, all to buy time for people to get away and call for someone who actually [i]knew what the hell they were doing.[/i] But that help never came. And although being beaten within an inch of his life in the most literal sense imaginable... the Rookie Hero [i]endured[/i]. Rising to his feet over and over again in the face of blows that could sunder mountains until, [i]finally[/i] he managed to somehow knock Metallo down hard enough that he didn't get back up. He'd actually managed to save the day. Unfortunately... he actually managed to [i]save the day.[/i] And as anyone from Fawcett, Gotham or Metropolis could tell you, the minute a [i]local[/i] hero does that, things rapidly go sideways in the [i]worst possible way[/i] as every lowlife with a superpower takes it as a queue to come out of the woodwork; Within two weeks, a major drug cartel decided to use the disarray caused by the Metallo incident to try and force it's way into the largest Canadian port on the Atlantic, bringing with them the drug-fueled villain [i]Snowflame[/i] and his new partner in crime [i]Crackrock[/i] (equally named for her guitar-powered sonic attacks as well as... well... [i]all the [b]crack[/b][/i]) to keep Halifax's mysterious new hero busy through their operations. A month after the denim-clad hero without a name and the Halifax Regional Police discreetly (and awkwardly at first) worked together to shut that whole enterprise down, Duncan, still sore from his narrow victory at the hands of Metallo and the gongshow of dealing with the Cartel and their enforcers was more than a little unhappy when he found out his girlfriend at the time (the existence of which was an extreme rarity in itself; the boy'd never really learned how to do romance, what with knowing that a meaningful hug from him would [i]kill[/i] most women) was actually [i]Blackfire[/i], a notorious space pirate from the planet Tamaran hiding out under the radar on a pre-spacetravel world... Particularly when her sister showed up to haul her back to their homeplanet to face trial and she quickly decided her only way out was to burn her and the [i]entire goddamn city to the ground,[/i] starting with Duncan's apartment. [i]That[/i] was a rough time, even [i]with[/i] the extraterrestrial help, but somehow the two managed to bring down the living, interstellar monument to Duncan's romantic failures before she could quite get around to blowing up the rest of the city. The two aliens vanishing in a burst of light soon after as the younger sister slapped something like handcuffs on her elder, hit a few buttons on her gauntlet activating a teleporter of some kind and enthusiastically waved to him with an uncannily bright grin before she went. By this point, having dealt with a murderous robot, two cocaine-fueled superfreaks employed by a massive drug cartel his [i]casually genocidal, apparently alien ex-girlfriend[/i] and having lost his place of work, his apartment and even his [i][b]FREAKING CAR[/b][/i] in the span of just over a month, Duncan was [i]particularly[/i] unimpressed with all the unusual turns his life had taken and looked absolutely [i]ragged[/i] staring numbly at what remained of his home on the still-abandoned street. As he turned to leave, however, he came face to face with his "Uncle" Ted. An old wartime buddy of his Grandfather's from the States he'd known since he was a boy, who took one good look at him and calmly stated- [COLOR=DARKSLATEGRAY][B]“Kid, you are [i]not[/i] going to your Grandma's house looking like that; you'll give the poor woman a heartattack.”[/B][/COLOR] Wincing at how easily he was recognized, Duncan barely started to ask how the man he hadn't seen since he wrote his driver's exam knew who he was while he was still wearing a mask but was abruptly told to shut up and follow. Being led to a condo downtown, the boy was sat down in the kitchen, handed a beer and told [i]just about everything.[/i] Ted knew about Duncan's talents because Duncan's Granddad knew. How did his Granddad know? Because he was [i]his Granddad[/i], of [i]course he did[/i] and after watching his lil' hooligan get his face kicked in by Metallo on the CBC, the first thing he did was call up his old buddy Ted and ask him to look out for him. And why would he do that? Because Ted was [i]Wildcat.[/i] To his credit, Duncan was just too damn tired at this point to even be surprised about this revelation, which at this point was pretty much par for the course with how his month had been going. Though he did idly start to wonder if the normal life he thought he'd lost when Metallo showed up had ever even existed in the first place, as he finished his beer and went to sleep on Ted's couch. Under the guidance of [i]Freaking Wildcat[/i] from that point on, the increasingly [i]less[/i] rookie hero's life was... well, still pretty damned [i]crazy,[/i] but at least it had some semblance of order to it and was a lot less of him just hammering his head against a metaphorical brick wall. Throughout the rest of the year Duncan and Ted went on to, amongst other things, fight off Adonis and his bouncing mechanical pecs, defend a small group of Atlantean refugees looking to escape one of Black Manta's lieutenants and their merry band of murderous fish-men and even teamed up with Robotman to deal with Atomic Skull, who broke out of confinement on a Russian sub en route to Cuba and rammed the damned thing onto the shore. Through all of this he earned an almost folk-hero-like reputation in his country as stubborn and unyielding in a fight, but clearly not in it for the fame with how he acted and dodged the media like the plague and how frank, yet approachable he was with both the people he helped and the Police he often found himself working with. Still not taking on an actual heroic alias or costume, he came to be seen by his city as... just some guy trying to help out... [i]one of them.[/i] Not some paragon placed on a golden, unreachable pedestal above others but a man firmly grounded in his roots; approachable, reliable and most all [i]human.[/i] And through all the names they began to call him, from "Hero of Halifax" to "Lion of Nova Scotia", one in particular began to gain traction- [b][i]"Champion."[/i][/b] A name he more than earned when, to put the cherry on his whole crazy year, Jack-Tar arrived advertising to anyone who'd listen about his delusions of reuniting the British Empire by force under his [i]enlightened[/i] rule. He also brought with him his own [i]immense psychic power[/i], the "Red Coats", his band of murderous metahumans he recruited from across Britain's former territories in Oceania, India, Africa and the Caribbean as well as, and this is important, [i]the ship he stole from Duncan's ex hovering in orbit with all of it's guns pointed [b]down.[/b][/i] Suffice to say, this was not a man who was used to hearing the word "No". So when Duncan refused to join him (with a now famous "No thanks, I'm good."), things got pretty hectic pretty quickly and he, Wildcat and the whole damned city probably would've been wiped off the face of the Earth had not the unusual friendships in strange places "The Champion" had made over the past year not come to fruition. With the Atlantean soldier-turned-refugee "Ultramariner" jumping into the fray, a Tamaranean frigate commanded by his ex's sister jumping into orbit and, eventually, even Robotman arriving with [i]freaking Superman[/i] at his back and a cheeky [color=orangered]"Kept 'cha waitin', didn't I?"[/color] on his robotic voice. Together, the six managed to stop the lunatic Brit before he could quite get around to completely leveling the city and half the province with it, after that well... The Tamaraneans headed home, but not before their Captain teleported down to the surface to give everyone involved what Superman would later tell him was the traditional greeting on her homeworld; an uncomfortably affectionate bone-shattering hug (which Cliff found [i]absolutely hilarious[/i]). The uncertain ("Uncertain" here meaning "The fuck do you do with a race of sea-dwellers whose King tried to wipe out humanity that one time?") status of the small Atlantean refugee community settled across the bay in neighbouring Dartmouth was greatly improved by Ultramariner's actions that day, and he settled down there in earnest and eventually became that city's local hero. And Duncan? For his part, after a year of balls-to-the-wall crime, alien and robot fighting insanity, he [i]finally[/i] came to terms with the idea that, yeah, [i]he was probably a goddamn superhero now.[/i] Moving off of Ted's couch when he went back to Gotham, finding a cozy new place to live in a decommissioned lighthouse just outside of town and taking up the name everyone was calling him anyway to fight crime in a snazzy new outfit the League gave him after the whole Jack-Tar Affair. A year after that and a few months, The Champion was brought into the League- Apparently at the posthumous request of Cliff himself. And the rest is history. ...Weird, surreal and oftentimes downright [i]crazy[/i] history. [/hider] [u][b]Notes:[/b][/u] [u][b]Sample Post:[/b][/u] [b]"And if that little Leafer doesn't like it, [i]he can go right back to Quebec or whereever the hell he came from!"[/i][/b] This proclamation was met by a chorus of cheers and clapping... as well as a long sigh. This was the [i]last[/i] thing Duncan wanted to hear five minutes out of the teleporter. [color=teal]"Godfrey [i]again?[/i]"[/color] the Champion groaned, walking into the monitor room with two big paper bags of food from his mum's diner in each hand before setting them down on the desk between his two coworkers. [color=teal]"Ya guys don't get tired of listening to this crap?"[/color] [color=blue]"Call it a guilty pleasure."[/color] Atom replied dryly, his elbow propped up on the desk, cheek resting in his hand and his face locked somewhere between bored, bemused and bewildered [color=blue]"Should've been here when he was ripping into [i]me.[/i] He get's a lot of mileage out of my ability to shrink."[/color] [color=purple]"Indeed. His thoughts on 'Little Green Men' are as... [i]amusing...[/i] as they are woefully inaccurate."[/color] J'onn added with a dismissive wave of his hand, all the while just barely hiding just how hungrily he was staring down at the goodies the bluenoser had brought with him back from home. With a click of his tongue to show his disapproval, but no further comment, Duncan fished through the bags and began handing out the fruits of his mother's business; Two jumbo donairs, one with feta and no onions for Atom, one with extra sauce and diced jalapenos for himself and an order of fish and chips for the Martian Manhunter as well as a slice of his mother's Oreo-cream pie with those rainbow sprinkles she knew the off-worlder liked. Lastly he placed down a six-pack of glass-bottled coke to share between them, before sitting down himself and unwrapping his food, glancing up at he screen as he did so. Monitor Duty was... well, it wasn't [i]exciting,[/i] but it had it's merits; For one, it was nice to just kick back and not get punched in the face by a robot, alien or weird lion-person while at work for a change and there was something weirdly pleasant about having the tower pretty much to yourself while everyone else was either away on missions or at home and off-duty. Technically, it was [i]supposed[/i] to be only two people per rotation, but J'onn had the day off and apparently didn't have anything better to do anyway so decided to join in on the fun. Like he did [i]every[/i] time Duncan was on Monitor Duty and he had the day off. For reasons that had [i]nothing[/i] to do with [i]free pie.[/i] No siree. Duncan mulled that last one over while chewing on a mouthful of donair; If he didn't know any better, he'd almost [i]swear[/i] Kord scheduled his rotation so his mom's diner was always open when he was on duty... [color=teal]"So, anything happen while I was out?"[/color] The Lion of Nova Scotia managed to get out through a mouthful of food. [color=blue]"Well, remember your old buddy Adonis? Well, he- You mind?-"[/color] Atom started, but stopped as he held out his bottle of coke towards Duncan, who politely reached over and popped the cap off with his thumb [color=blue]"-Showed up in New York and tried to cop a feel on [b][i]Barda.[/i][/b]"[/color] Champion immediately choked on his food, his body unable to contain the primordial [i]need[/i] to laugh that mental-image elicited even through the coughing, wheezing and J'onn slapping him on the back until he popped open another coke and washed it down. [color=teal]"...Please... [i]tell[/i] me you got that on video."[/color] He finally managed over one last cough. To this, Ray just grinned and punched a few keys on his console, bringing up a new window over Godfrey's spray-tanned and screaming face on the third monitor. [color=blue]"If I zoom in and slow it down, you can actually [i]see[/i] the exact moment he realized he made a [i]terrible mistake[/i]."[/color] True to his word, the three were treated to the silent, almost [i]sublimely slow[/i] footage of the mecha-clad creep's lecherous grin steadily melting into wide-eyed and open-mouthed [i]horror[/i] as a clenched fist beautifully made it's way into the viewscreen and crumpled his big metal pseudo-chin like [i]paper[/i] before hitting his [i]real[/i] jaw and eliciting an explosion of teeth. Immediately, the monitor room exploded in a fit of raucous laughter, with Champion doubled-over in his chair actively trying [i]not[/i] to slap his knee and break anything with the concussive force that'd bring, Atom holding his cold coke against his head as he strained under the pressure of trying not to spew the mouthful of the stuff he had out his nose... even as he rewound the footage and played it again, even [i]more[/i] slowly this time so Champ could see where Adonis had actually started to [i]cry[/i] a little when he realized what was going to happen to him. Hell, even J'onn managed to snort a little through a mouthful of beer-battered fish. [color=blue]"Who loves you, Baby?"[/color] Atom asked, slapping a hand down on Champ's shoulder as he replayed the footage [i]again[/i], this time zoomed out to catch the expressions of Barda and the rest of team. Yeah... Monitor Duty wasn't [i]exciting.[/i] [i]But it had it's merits.[/i] [/hider]