There's no word to describe how you might feel looking up at a statue of someone you knew, someone you loved, someone who died fifteen years ago but whose impact is still felt in the city she lived in. The sculptors put a lot of work into every detail, likely poring over every photograph of the Queen of Blades to make sure they got all the details right. Most of the statues are placed in chronological order from the death of the hero each one represents, but the park's planners probably felt like it wouldn't be right to do anything but place hers next to Shining Shield's, even though their deaths were over a decade apart.
And then the word hits me, seeing the two of them standing side by side, the Queen beaming behind a half mask as Shield stands stalwartly beside her in full plate armor: I feel inferior. This is the legacy I come from, the legacy I don't think I'll ever be able to live up to. I'll never be half the hero either of them were.
I've been visiting Memorial Park to look at the statues since before my mom died. Stopped for a few years after she died, then made it a point to visit once a month after that, the only other gap being the time I left Calder to go to college. This is the first time I've been here since I moved back to Calder. When she was alive, mom would take me down here once a month, just me and her, and we'd sit on a bench looking at Shield's statue. She told me stories about him, how he was one of the bravest men she knew, how much passion he held for his work as a hero. He was my favorite hero throughout my childhood, the one I dressed up as every Halloween while my mom would wear her actual heroic attire, her secret identity long gone by that point. "My little Shield," she'd call me with a smile, and my dad would shake his head when he heard it and try to hide a sigh.
Dad never liked Shield. I only started to understand why later in life, doing research on my mom and her heroic partner, digging through archived news and magazine articles on the Wayback Machine. Back in the day, the tabloids and gossip rags would always go on about every small show of care between the Queen of Blades and Shining Shield, how every hand on a shoulder to steady the other during a battle or a celebratory hug after a job well done surely meant they were in love. They had to be, they had saved each other's lives so many times at that point. It just made sense.
While mom tried to maintain a secret identity early in her career, those things tend to be very tenuous, and eventually it was uncovered who she was and that she was dating a civilian who wasn't even a Gray. When that came out, the tabloids shifted to how my dad wasn't good enough for her, how she should be with someone in the same line of work, like Shield. After he died, it just got worse and worse, personal attacks against dad for being alive while Shield wasn't and against mom for letting her partner die and then continuing to date this man like nothing happened. It must have been terrible for both of them.
This is the life I'm trying to break into, the whirlwind of media exposure that won't let you get a moment of rest, the people you protect and save deciding to spit on you and the people you love. I look over the long line of monuments to dead heroes, thinking about how this is the life that every one of them lived, only for them all to be cut short. As a cape, you don't get to die peacefully in your bed surrounded by loved ones. You die in action. You die a hero.
Man, it's always so uplifting coming here.
I let out a sigh, shake my head, then turn away from the statues and begin the walk out of the park. The walkway at the end of the line of statues is cordoned off and diverted onto a temporary path, and I look over to find the cause is the construction of the latest addition, the statue of The Mountain. Shit, he died pretty recently, didn't he? I remember reading about it not even a week ago, scrolling on my phone in bed and trying not to think about how I'd have to be up in three more hours to get ready for my shift at the bar.
That dread of the day to come was forgotten as my heart sank reading the headline, memories of the man flooding in. He was always kind when I met him at galas and other social events held by Vanguard for heroes and their families, and he got along pretty well with my mother. His son Rock and I were friendly too, though we never met outside of those events and I haven't seen him and Saw since mom's funeral. I wonder for a moment how Rock must be taking Saw's death, then shake it off. The past is the past. I have to look to the future.
The sun is just starting to set, casting Calder City in an orange glow. I'm sitting on the second level of a fire escape in full costume, fiddling with the dials of the worn down police scanner I picked up at a pawn shop today. Probably should have looked up how to get this thing working, but I feel like I'm close.
I'm trying to pick up any voices obscured by the static when a voice sounds off about thirty feed ahead of me:
"ALL THE CASH IN THE REGISTER, RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!"
I look up and see a man stepping into a convenience store across the road, the glass door closing behind him. Alright, looks like I picked the right place to start my patrol. I climb down the fire escape, crossing the street and stepping up to the door to look inside. The gunman is waving his pistol around before setting his aim on the middle aged clerk. The clerk doesn't look too perturbed, like he's done this song and dance dozens if not hundreds of times at this point, simply popping open the register and calmly pulling cash out of it one stack at a time.
The door chimes as I step inside and the gunman turns on his heel to aim the pistol my way. He looks me up and down, looking irritated at the interruption. "Who the fuck are you supposed to be?" he asks, sneering.
Instead of saying anything in response, I summon my sword and fling it at the gun, making sure to dull the blade so I don't slice his hand off. The spectral weapon flies true, knocking the pistol out of his hand. The gun goes off as it falls, the round flying into a rack of magazines, a cloud of shredded paper filling the store. My blade bumps into a wall then clatters to the ground before dissipating. Takes a lot out of me to summon a new one so soon after dispelling the last one, so I'm gonna have to do this the old fashioned way.
The burglar barely has time to blink in surprise before I'm on him, sending a wild punch into his nose that knocks him on his ass. He's still sitting instead of laying prone though, so I lift a leg and send a boot into his chest, sending him to the floor. He groans and wheezes in pain, clutching at his ribs, and I turn to the clerk. His weathered face is pulled into a deep scowl.
"What the hell is your problem?" he asks.
I blink behind the visor of my helmet. "... What?"
"I had it under control. This would've been a write off, now it's a whole fucking fiasco because you stepped in. Trashed my damn magazine rack, too."
Shit. "I was trying to help."
The clerk clicks his tongue, shaking his head in frustration. "Damn capes, you're all the same. Get the fuck out of here."
There's not much else to do than what he asks, so I leave the store. I can hear sirens fast approaching, so I take off sprinting into the alley across the road, heading as far as I can away from the store. That was the first time I stepped in to stop something bigger than a mugging in the street. I took that guy out quickly, efficiently, but that clerk really didn't appreciate it at all. I guess I can understand why, but it stings to get reprimanded for trying to help.
Guess this is my first experience with what I was thinking about the other day, how the people you're trying to help will disparage you at the same time. I'll have to get used to it.
When I can't hear sirens anymore, I duck into a quiet corner and pull out my police scanner again, trying to get it working. Got a long night ahead of me.
"I don't believe in fate. I wasn't chosen to be a hero, I chose to be a hero. I choose to get up and keep fighting because that's what a real hero does."
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
_________________________________________________________ (FC: Justice Smith; Dialogue: Bolded CadetBlue In Costume, CadetBlue Out Of Costume) _________________________________________________________
S U M M A R Y S U M M A R Y
_________________________________________________________ Scott Jonas Knight _________________________________________________________ October 12th 2003 | 22 _________________________________________________________ Single | Male | Bisexual
S T A T S S T A T S
_________________________________________________________ Height | 5'11 (180 cm) _________________________________________________________ Hair Color | Black _________________________________________________________ Eye Color | Brown _________________________________________________________ Hometown | Calder City
The year was 1996. A new hero emerged on the scene in Calder City: the Queen of Blades, a young woman capable of flight and summoning ghostly blades that she could manipulate with tactile telekinesis. Behind the mask was May Morgan, an intern at Harper Mueller and Co. Attorneys At Law in downtown Calder City. A year into her career, she would form a heroic partnership with Shining Shield, a hero with the similar power of summoning apparitions of shields.
The two would make names for themselves as heroes in the city, putting away countless criminals and several supervillains. The most prominent of these villains was Omega, a powerhouse with enhanced strength, speed, durability, and flight. While Omega was incredibly durable, the Queen's blades were able to pierce him nearly effortlessly.
In 1999, May met Benjamin Knight, a local bartender that she would begin to date and reveal her heroic life to. Two years later, her partner Shining Shield died forming a barricade around her and a civilian as a building collapsed around them. Despite this tragedy, May continued her work alone, finding comfort in Ben.
In 2002, May and Ben married in a small ceremony, and a year later their son Scott was born. At that point, May was a successful lawyer and Ben had opened his own bar in Midtown that was a popular spot on the weekends. Scott's early childhood was spent relatively normally, save for the fact that his mother was a beloved superhero who openly regaled her son with tales of her exploits, both old and new.
Shortly before his 8th birthday, Scott's powers manifested when he summoned a ghostly shortsword in his hand while playing alone outside. At first he was amazed, swinging it around recklessly, but then he found he couldn't make it go away. He burst into tears and eventually his parents came outside to find him, his mother coaching him until he eventually managed to make the blade dissipate. May promised to train her son in the usage of his powers after his birthday.
Then the day came when everything changed: October 12th. The Knight family was having a day out to celebrate Scott's 8th birthday, seated at a restaurant and waiting for their food to be served. The next thing they knew, the building was falling down around them, a hulking figure in a skintight bodysuit standing among the rubble.
Omega.
"Found you."
Ben took Scott into his arms and ran as far as he could while May stayed behind to fend off Omega. Ben dropped his son off in a safe place and ran back to the restaurant to help his wife, Scott immediately sprinting as fast as his little legs would let him after his father. When Scott caught up to his father, Omega was nowhere to be found. What Scott did find was his father, holding the corpse of his wife in his arms.
Omega was captured and taken into Vanguard custody shortly after the incident, only to escape several months later. He hasn't been seen since. A large public memorial service was held in Calder City for the Queen of Blades, and a small private memorial was held for May Knight by family and friends. The trauma of the attack and the loss of his mother caused Scott to withdraw, cutting himself off from friends at school. Ben tried his best to comfort his son while managing his own grief, but no matter how hard he tried Scott kept his distance.
As Scott grew older and entered his teen years, this distance became outright hostility as he began to fall in with the wrong crowd, experimenting with drugs and alcohol as well as committing petty crime. His father couldn't figure out how to get through to his son, and their relationship fell to an all time low.
One late night alone in his room, Scott dropped acid for the first time. The experience was a harrowing and soul-rending one as Scott found himself face to face with his mother, begging her son not to throw his life away. After he came back to his senses, it was as though a switch had been flipped in the young man: he cut contact with his delinquent friends and cleaned up his act, reconnecting with his father and reaching out to old friends, hoping to mend bridges he thought had long burned.
The rest of high school passed by peacefully, Scott finally feeling as though he had recovered from his mother's death. He enrolled in an art school a few states away to study audio engineering in the university's music department. He hadn't even summoned his sword in years at that point. But inside of him there was still a yawning pit, a void that he didn't know how to fill.
One night Scott was walking back to his apartment only to find a drunk man harassing a girl he knew, trying to force himself onto her. He knew he couldn't just let that happen. The young man stepped in, holding a glowing blade to the drunk's throat. The older man took off running as soon as the blade was lowered. Scott helped the girl back to her apartment and then went back home.
It hit him: he needed to follow in his mother's footsteps.
The next few weeks were spent going out at night wearing a ski mask and foiling low level crimes in the area around his university. As he did so, his grades and attendance dropped steadily, but to Scott, his burgeoning career as a crime fighter was more important. Eventually, he was forced to drop out and move back to Calder City, getting a job at a bar that wasn't his dad's and renting a cramped apartment by the docks. He continued his vigilante activities.
His dad caught on pretty quickly when a vigilante using a ghost sword showed up in town the same week his son moved back. The two of them got into a long argument, Ben demanding that Scott give it up with Scott refusing to back down. Eventually Ben's anger turned to sadness and he began to plead with Scott, telling him that he didn't want to lose his son the same way he lost his wife. As much as it hurt him, Scott told his father that this is what he needed to do, and eventually Ben accepted defeat.
Now, Scott is still working on establishing himself as a vigilante, moving up from a ski mask and a hoodie to a sort of city biker styled outfit. One of these days he's going to have to find out where Shield got his armor made, but for now it will work.
Pretty soon, the Ace of Blades will be a household name in Calder City.
Spectral Weapons - Weapons made of pure glowing blue energy. Their sharpness, strength, and durability is dependent upon the user's willpower; the user can also manipulate these factors, making the weapon as sharp and strong as they desire, or conversely duller and weaker for non lethal usage. The weapons are effectively weightless, requiring finesse and skill more than raw strength to wield effectively. At the moment, Scott can only summon a single longsword, though over time he will be able to learn to summon different kinds of weapons such as axes, maces, spears, and other kinds of swords, as well as shields. Eventually, he will be able to summon multiple weapons at a time.
Tactile Telekinesis - A subset of telekinesis, only capable of affecting Scott's spectral weapons as well as his own body. Scott has recently tapped into this ability, learning how to recall his sword back to him after throwing it. Eventually he will be able to deftly control his weapons when they aren't in hand, sending them flying around and controlling them in mid-air. The capstone of his development of his abilities will be learning to use this ability to fly.
Scott is a quiet young man, not as outgoing as he was as a child but not as misanthropic as he was as a teenager. He prefers to stick to the people he knows, rarely venturing to make new friends, but when approached first finds himself able to fall into pleasant conversations with people he doesn't know well pretty easily after feeling out the vibe. To those who know him well, he's a deeply compassionate person who strives to do right by everyone, though he often gets caught up in his own head thinking about everything that could go wrong.
In costume, Ace of Blades hearkens back to both his mother's persona as a wisecracking yet compassionate heroine as well as Shining Shield's stoic man of few words attitude. Ace is mostly silent, though when he does speak it's usually to let out a sarcastic quip at the expense of whatever crook he's about to beat the crap out of. When dealing with civilians, he stays mostly reserved, but will freely offer words of comfort and assurance to those who are especially shaken up.
As far as hobbies, Scott is an avid audiophile, producing music in his free time, collecting vinyls and CDs, and attending concerts and festivals when he can scrape up the money for it. He's also a huge comic book nerd, owning several mint condition issues of comics licensing the stories of real world heroes like his mother and Shining Shield as well as fictional superheroes from companies like DC and Marvel. On top of these framed issues, he also has entire crates of loose issues and many trade paperbacks.
M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S
At the moment, Scott's two main goals are to make the streets of Calder City safer and gain renown as the inheritor of his mother's mantle. Everything else is secondary, including his civilian life. As much as he tries to deny it, he's also hoping that he can eventually be strong enough that he can avenge his mother in the event that Omega resurfaces, feeling that he won't be able to get closure until Omega is finally dead.
_________________________________________________________ Richard Reynolds _________________________________________________________ 7 of July | 21 _________________________________________________________ Single | Male | Bisexual
S T A T S S T A T S
_________________________________________________________ Height | 5'10 _________________________________________________________ Hair Color | Brunette _________________________________________________________ Eye Color | Golden-Brown _________________________________________________________ Hometown | Calder City
His mother, Sun Rise (Jaqueline Reynolds), was already famous before he ever opened his eyes. She was not merely another costumed hero in Calder City. She was the kind of hero people built murals around. A radiant woman with impossible power, impossible beauty, and a public image so carefully polished that she seemed less like a person and more like an answer to a national prayer.
She could descend from the sky surrounded by gold-white fire. She could stand between collapsing buildings and hold them apart with burning hands. She could smile for cameras after a disaster with ash in her hair and blood on her costume, and somehow still look like hope.
When her first daughter was born, the media called it a blessing. Now when her son was born, they called it a sequel. Expectations where higher than ever. And that was a problem.
For starters, Richard birth was not private.
The announcement was staged through Sun Rise’s official channels. A soft photograph, golden lighting, a carefully written caption about “the next generation of hope.” Sponsors sent gifts. Hero magazines ran speculative pieces about what his powers would be. Fan accounts began comparing baby photos within hours.
His older sister, Sunflare (Sonya Reynolds), was already a phenomenon.
Even as a small child, Sunflare looked like she had inherited every good thing from their mother. Golden hair, bright eyes, flawless skin, early signs of radiant power flickering around her hands when she laughed. She was beautiful in the way brands loved... clean, heroic, photogenic, close and human. She smiled when cameras appeared. She waved without being told. She learned the language of fame before she learned long division.
But Richard was different.
He was a fussy baby. Sickly for his first few months. Sensitive to loud sounds, bright flashes, crowds, and being passed around by strangers. He cried during interviews. He hid his face during photo shoots. He did not glow when he laughed. He did not levitate in his crib. He did not burn with destiny.
The first wave of disappointment was disguised as jokes as social media usually do
“Maybe he’s charging up.”
“Guess all the sunlight went to his sister.”
“Every sun has a little shadow.”
Sun Rise hated those jokes, not because they hurt her son but because they made the family brand look vulnerable.
Richard’s powers first appeared during a public family event.
It was supposed to be harmless. A charity gala. A few speeches. A staged family moment. Sun Rise in white and gold. Sunflare in a small ceremonial costume, already glowing faintly for the cameras. Richard beside them, uncomfortable and stiff.
During the event, a superhuman protester or unstable attacker caused a small blast near the stage. It was not enough to kill Sun Rise. Maybe not even enough to injure her but Richard panicked and he raised his arms. And just for one second, golden light formed around him like a shield.
A curved plate of sunlight appeared in front of his body, cracked like stained glass, and shattered almost immediately. The blast threw him backward anyway. He hit the ground crying, his suit burned, his arms covered in faint glowing lines shaped almost like gauntlets.
The public reaction should have been amazement, and would have been 50 years ago but instead, people laughed. Not cruelly at first or well not everyone. But enough people did. The clip looked pathetic beside footage of Sun Rise stopping avalanches of flame or Sunflare blooming with radiant power. Richard’s first manifestation looked like a scared child hiding behind a toy shield.
The internet named him before he chose the name himself. Sunbeam. Richard hate it almost immediately.
Puberty made everything worse.
Sunflare became stunning. Her powers deepened into something frighteningly beautiful. She looked less like a teenage hero and more like an ancient goddess of love and war wearing modern fabric. Brands wanted her. Hero academies wanted her. Cameras wanted her. But Richard grew awkward. Sometimes his armor appeared at random. Sometimes when embarrassed. Sometimes when angry. Sometimes not when he needed it. Under stress, a glowing half-helm would form over his face, making him look strange and weird rather than heroic. When he tried to fly, he could only launch himself in stupid, uncontrolled bursts, golden wing-shapes tearing apart behind him.
The internet devoured him.
Clips circulated constantly at all times.
"Sunbeam Falls During Basic Flight Test" or "Sunbeam’s Armor Breaks Again" or even "Sun Rise’s Son Can’t Even Glow Properly"
The cruelest comments compared the family’s mythic identities. If Sun Rise was a goddess and Sunflare was a war-star. Richard was "Sir Dim-a-Lot"
At last, at fifteen, Richard joined a supervised rescue operation with his mother and sister.
A bridge section had collapsed after a fight between two superhumans. Sun Rise handled the main structural danger. Sunflare flew civilians to safety, radiant and perfect against the smoke and of course Richard was assigned support. God how much he hated that word.
During the rescue, a school bus shifted near the edge of the broken bridge. Richard moved before thinking. His armor manifested more fully than ever before. Golden plates over his chest, shoulders, arms, and legs. Half-formed wings burst from his back as he sprinted. And for a moment, he looked magnificent but then the armor cracked.
He reached the bus, braced himself, and held it just long enough for three children to escape. But the light-armor shattered under the strain. His legs buckled. The bus slipped farther before Sun Rise caught it effortlessly with one hand.
The cameras got everything. They got Richard’s effort and his struggle but they also got his failure, and everone knows what the news love more than triumph.
After the events Sun Rise gave a flawless interview about bravery, training, and the importance of knowing one’s limits. It sounded supportive to the public. But Richard thought he understood the real plot under the interview. "You reached too high" and "You embarrassed us."
Sunflare visited him in the medical wing later and told him he had saved those kids. Richard said, “And you would have saved all of them.” She had no answer and that silence hurt more than any insult.
Richard began to change after that.
He stopped trying to be charming. Stopped trying to smile correctly. Stopped trying to sound grateful in interviews. He became sullen, defensive, and sarcastic. The public called him bitter, and they were right. But his powers responded to that bitterness.
The armor came more easily when he was angry. It became harder, heavier, more jagged. Less like a shining knight. More like a war relic dug out of a battlefield. The wings that formed behind him when he moved fast looked torn, like banners burning in the wind.
His mother of course was disturbed by this. Richard thought that Sun Rise was disturbed not because he was suffering but because his aesthetic was wrong. After all his family was supposed to look divine, clean, golden, aspirational. Richard looked like a broken toy. Like a squire returning from a failed campaign. Sunlight through smoke.
Their discussions went day after day, harsh words pronunced without thinking until something broke fundamentailly in their strained relationship.
At eighteen, Richard was expected to sign with the same management group that handled Sun Rise and Sunflare. For they had a plan for him, Marketing always has. A rebrand...or even a redemption arc.
They wanted to lean into the knight imagery, but in a sanitized way. White cape. Gold trim. Family crest. Carefully scripted humility. A public statement about “learning to shine in his own way.” He would remain Sunbeam, but now as a softer, more inspirational figure.
Richard refused. And then Sun Rise glowed angry as she ever has been. She told him the family had carried him long enough. She told him that without the name Reynolds, without her legacy, without the public’s curiosity, he was nothing. Just a mediocre superhuman with unstable armor and a bad attitude.
“Then let me be nothing somewhere else.” And Richard left the state for good. The media called it a breakdown. Sun Rise’s team called it a "period of personal growth".
For a while, Richard disappeared from elite hero society. Of course he did not become a villain just because of family problems, he had a good heart and a decent enough head. He did not join a glamorous team either, no one wanted that baggage. He did not make a dramatic statement, not his style anyway. What he did was work. Quietly.
He helped in places where fame mattered less than survival. Apartment fires. Gang-related superhuman incidents. Industrial accidents. Neighborhoods where heroes arrived late because cameras arrived late. His armor, though weaker than his mother’s or sister’s raw power, proved useful. He could take hits ordinary rescuers could not. He could shield civilians. He could crash through burning doors. He could create temporary barriers of hard sunlight. His wing-bursts were bad for elegant flight, but good for sudden charges, leaps, and midair redirection.
He was not a god (not that he wanted to be one). But in a narrow hallway full of smoke, a knight was better than a goddess on a billboard. This is where Richard began to discover the truth of his power bit by bit. His armor strengthened when he protected someone but not when he performed neither when he posed or when he tried to impress his mother.
When he stood between harm and another person, the light answered. Which was weird, and scary. It suggested his power had rules and maybe even values.
At twenty, Richard’s reputation changed after a major disaster at a Calder City hospital. An energy surge, caused several floors to destabilize. The building’s systems failed. Heat and radiation built up in the walls. Evacuation became impossible in several wings. And Sun Rise was away handling a major international crisis. Sunflare arrived, but her power was too destructive for parts of the building. Every flare risked worsening the internal cascade. But Richard went in.
His armor formed slowly at first. Gauntlets. Breastplate. Greaves. A cracked helm of light over his face. Not beautiful or clean (It never was). But ey, it was solid.
He started carrying people through collapsing corridors. Forming shields over operating rooms. Using own body to absorb falling debris. When the floor gave way beneath a group of patients, his wings finally manifested long enough to launch him across the gap, not in graceful flight, but enough for a good charge across.
Someone recorded him kneeling in a burning hallway, both arms raised, holding a dome of sunlight over trapped children while the ceiling came down around him and this time the armor did not shatter. This time, it held. A lot of people still mocked him. Some said he had finally done the bare minimum expected of a Reynolds. He didn't care, he has done his job.
At twenty-one, Richard Reynolds still uses the name Sunbeam, partly because the world gave it to him and partly because he has not yet earned the right, in his own mind, to abandon it.
His powers remain weaker than Sun Rise’s and Sunflare’s in raw scale. He cannot level city blocks with solar fire. He cannot blind armies with divine radiance. He cannot descend from the sky like a god or a war-star but his power is growing differently.
He can now manifest partial armor at will. Under pressure, he can create a full cuirass and gauntlets. His sunlight constructs are still unstable, but they are becoming more defined creating shields, short blades, lances, wing-bursts, radiant banners, and protective circles. The imagery is increasingly knighly for good or bad.
Sometimes, when he pushes himself too hard, he hears things...distant horns. Hooves and Steel. A battlefield under dawn with a king sleeping beneath a hill and twelve paladins riding toward the sun.
He first realized his powers when he was 6 years old and have grown as he grew up
Mystical Armor: Richard can manifest a suit of radiant full plate armor seemingly forged from sunlight. While active, the armor grants him enhanced durability and physical strength in addition to the protection provided by the armor itself. It allows him to withstand impacts, endure heavier punishment, and fight on a level beyond normal human limits.
Golden Wings: As part of his solar projection abilities, Richard can manifest golden wings of solidified light. These wings allow him to move at superhuman speeds in short bursts, granting him sudden acceleration, powerful leaps, and limited aerial maneuverability. However, the wings are physical enough to be grabbed, struck, or restrained, meaning enemies can use them against him much like someone might exploit a cape in close combat.
Mystical Weapons: Recently, Richard has begun developing a new extension of his armor. The ability to manifest melee weapons made from sunlight. These weapons usually take the shape of medieval arms such as longswords, spears, shields, axes, and polearms. They greatly increase his offensive potential and striking power, but they come with a drawback. The sunlight required to form these weapons appears to draw energy away from his armor, creating a trade-off between durability and raw power.
Richard is guarded, defensive, and often sharper than he means to be. He grew up under constant public comparison to two almost impossibly radiant women: his famous mother, Sun Rise, and his older sister, Sunflare. Because of that, he learned early that every mistake could become a headline, every awkward moment could become a meme, and every failure would be measured against his family’s perfection.
He is not naturally cruel, but he can be bitter. Praise makes him suspicious. Pity makes him angry. He dislikes being treated like a tragic underdog almost as much as he dislikes being mocked as a failure. Richard has spent most of his life feeling like the disappointing child of a heroic dynasty, and that has made him sensitive to condescension, especially from famous heroes, media personalities, or anyone who talks about “legacy” too easily.
Socially, he is more introverted than extroverted that is for sure. He does not enjoy cameras or public appearances, charity galas, or interviews. He is uncomfortable when people stare at him too much, because attention has usually meant judgment. Around strangers, he can come across as cold, sarcastic, or ungrateful. Around people he trusts however, he is more thoughtful than he first appears. He notices when others are excluded, overlooked, or quietly suffering. And he has a soft spot for people who are not useful to anyone’s image (or that they think so).
Richard is certainly brave, but not in a clean or shining way. His courage often looks like stubbornness and raw emotion. He will complain, glare, and act like he does not care, then still be the first person to step between danger and someone who cannot protect themselves. He does not always believe in himself, but he does believe that people should not be abandoned just because they are inconvenient.
His relationship with his family is complicated to say the least. He resents his mother deeply, not only because she criticized him, but because she made him feel like love had to be earned through excellence. He also resents his sister, though in a more painful and conflicted way. He loves his sister madly, but he struggles not to see her as living proof of everything he failed to become. Part of him wants to repair that relationship. Another part of him is not ready to stop being angry.
At his worst Richard can be jealous, defensive, and prone to pushing away people who genuinely care. But at his best, he is loyal, protective, perceptive enough, and far more heroic than he gives himself credit for.
M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S
The greatest thing that Richard wants is to prove that he is not a failed version of his mother or sister.
For most of his life, the world has treated him as a lesser branch of the Sun Rise legacy always weaker, uglier, sarcastic, and "not marketeable". His first instinct is to reject that legacy entirely and do his own thing but deep down the truth is more complicated. He does want to be a hero and he does want to matter. He does want to save people because is the right thing to do and finally He simply does not want his life to belong to his mother’s image.
His immediate goal is to establish himself as an independent hero in Calder City. He prefers practical rescue work, crisis response, and street-level intervention over glamorous public operations. He wants to be useful where the cameras are looking or not. Fires, collapses, energy accidents, violent superhuman incidents, trapped civilians... these are the situations where his powers make the most sense, and where he feels closest to being someone real instead of a disappointing headline.
Long-term, Richard wants to understand the true nature of his abilities. The more his power develops, the less it feels like a weaker copy of Sun Rise’s solar gift. The armor, the shields, the wing-like bursts, the knightly imagery all of it suggests a mythic identity that belongs to him alone (¿alone? maybe). He is beginning to wonder whether his power is connected to something older than his family’s public mythology.
His greatest aspiration is not fame, though part of him still hungers for recognition more than he wants to admit. What he truly wants is to become undeniable on his own terms. Not as Sun Rise’s son. Not as Sunflare’s weaker brother. Not as the internet’s favorite failed legacy.
He wants to become the kind of hero who stands firm when brighter figures fall back.
Well there goes my first post ever here, hope it's good enough even if it is rejected since i'm new. But wanted to try anyway :)
Solid.
I do wish I said publicly that I planned on my character eventually donning a suit of knight armor as his heroic personality though lmao. Though his will be a physical suit rather than a manifestation of his powers so I think it's distinct enough.
"I don't believe in fate. I wasn't chosen to be a hero, I chose to be a hero. I choose to get up and keep fighting because that's what a real hero does."
C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T C H A R A C T E R P O R T R A I T
_________________________________________________________ Scott Jonas Knight _________________________________________________________ October 12th | 23 _________________________________________________________ Single | Male | Bisexual
S T A T S S T A T S
_________________________________________________________ Height | 5'11 (180 cm) _________________________________________________________ Hair Color | Black _________________________________________________________ Eye Color | Brown _________________________________________________________ Hometown | Calder City
The year was 1996. A new hero emerged on the scene in Calder City: the Queen of Blades, a young woman capable of flight and summoning ghostly blades that she could manipulate with tactile telekinesis. Behind the mask was May Morgan, an intern at Harper Mueller and Co. Attorneys At Law in downtown Calder City. A year into her career, she would form a heroic partnership with Shining Shield, a hero with the similar power of summoning apparitions of shields.
The two would make names for themselves as heroes in the city, putting away countless criminals and several supervillains. The most prominent of these villains was Omega, a powerhouse with enhanced strength, speed, durability, and flight. While Omega was incredibly durable, the Queen's blades were able to pierce him nearly effortlessly.
In 1999, May met Benjamin Knight, a local bartender that she would begin to date and reveal her heroic life to. Two years later, her partner Shining Shield died forming a barricade around her and a civilian as a building collapsed around them. Despite this tragedy, May continued her work alone, finding comfort in Ben.
In 2002, May and Ben married in a small ceremony, and a year later their son Scott was born. At that point, May was a successful lawyer and Ben had opened his own bar in the south side of Calder City that was a popular spot on the weekends. Scott's early childhood was spent relatively normally, save for the fact that his mother was a beloved superhero who openly regaled her son with tales of her exploits, both old and new.
Shortly before his 8th birthday, Scott's powers manifested when he summoned a ghostly shortsword in his hand while playing alone outside. At first he was amazed, swinging it around recklessly, but then he found he couldn't make it go away. He burst into tears and eventually his parents came outside to find him, his mother coaching him until he eventually managed to make the blade dissipate. May promised to train her son in the usage of his powers after his birthday.
Then the day came when everything changed: October 12th. The Knight family was having a day out to celebrate Scott's 8th birthday, seated at a restaurant and waiting for their food to be served. The next thing they knew, the building was falling down around them, a hulking figure in a skintight bodysuit standing among the rubble.
Omega.
"Found you."
Ben took Scott into his arms and ran as far as he could while May stayed behind to fend off Omega. Ben dropped his son off in a safe place and ran back to the restaurant to help his wife, Scott immediately sprinting as fast as his little legs would let him after his father. When Scott caught up to his father, Omega was nowhere to be found. What Scott did find was his father, holding the corpse of his wife in his arms.
Omega was recaptured and taken into Vanguard custody shortly after the incident, only to escape several months later. He hasn't been seen since. A large public memorial service was held in Calder City for the Queen of Blades, and a small private memorial was held for May Knight by family and friends. The trauma of the attack and the loss of his mother caused Scott to withdraw, cutting himself off from friends at school. Ben tried his best to comfort his son while managing his own grief, but no matter how hard he tried Scott kept his distance.
As Scott grew older and entered his teen years, this distance became outright hostility as he began to fall in with the wrong crowd, experimenting with drugs and alcohol as well as committing petty crime. His father couldn't figure out how to get through to his son, and their relationship fell to an all time low.
One late night alone in his room, Scott dropped acid for the first time. The experience was a harrowing and soul-rending one as Scott found himself face to face with his mother, begging her son not to throw his life away. After he came back to his senses, it was as though a switch had been flipped in the young man: he cut contact with his delinquent friends and cleaned up his act, reconnecting with his father and reaching out to old friends, hoping to mend bridges he thought had long burned.
The rest of high school passed by peacefully, Scott finally feeling as though he had recovered from his mother's death. He enrolled in an art school a few states away to study audio engineering in the university's music department. He hadn't even summoned his sword in years at that point. But inside of him there was still a yawning pit, a void that he didn't know how to fill.
One night Scott was walking back to his apartment only to find a drunk man harassing a girl he knew, trying to force himself onto her. He knew he couldn't just let that happen. The young man stepped in, holding a glowing blade to the drunk's throat. The older man took off running as soon as the blade was lowered. Scott helped the girl back to her apartment and then went back home.
It hit him: he needed to follow in his mother's footsteps.
The next few weeks were spent going out at night wearing a ski mask and foiling low level crimes in the area around his university. As he did so, his grades and attendance dropped steadily, but to Scott, his burgeoning career as a crime fighter was more important. Eventually, he was forced to drop out and move back to Calder City, getting a job at a bar that wasn't his dad's and renting a cramped apartment by the docks. He continued his vigilante activities.
His dad caught on pretty quickly when a vigilante using a ghost sword showed up in town the same week his son moved back. The two of them got into a long argument, Ben demanding that Scott give it up with Scott refusing to back down. Eventually Ben's anger turned to sadness and he began to plead with Scott, telling him that he didn't want to lose his son the same way he lost his wife. As much as it hurt him, Scott told his father that this is what he needed to do, and eventually Ben accepted defeat.
By now, Scott has made a small name for himself in Calder City, moving up from a ski mask and a hoodie to a sort of city biker styled outfit. One of these days he's going to have to find out where Shield got his armor made, but for now it works.
Pretty soon, the Ace of Blades will be a household name in Calder City.
Spectral Weapons - Weapons made of pure glowing blue energy. Their sharpness, strength, and durability is dependent upon the user's willpower; the user can also manipulate these factors, making the weapon as sharp and strong as they desire, or conversely duller and weaker for non lethal usage. The weapons are effectively weightless, requiring finesse and skill more than raw strength to wield effectively. At the moment, Scott can only summon a single longsword, though over time he will be able to learn to summon different kinds of weapons such as axes, maces, spears, and other kinds of swords, as well as shields. Eventually, he will be able to summon multiple weapons at a time.
Tactile Telekinesis - A subset of telekinesis, only capable of affecting Scott's spectral weapons as well as his own body. He doesn't have any sort of skill in using it, but eventually he will be able to deftly control his weapons when they aren't in hand, sending them flying and recalling them swiftly. The capstone of his development of his abilities will be learning to use this ability to fly.
Myers-Briggs Personality Type: INFP (Mediator) Scott is a quiet young man, not as outgoing as he was as a child but not as misanthropic as he was as a teenager. He prefers to stick to the people he knows, rarely venturing to make new friends, but when approached first finds himself able to fall into pleasant conversations with people he doesn't know well pretty easily after feeling out the vibe. To those who know him well, he's a deeply compassionate person who strives to do right by everyone, though he often gets caught up in his own head thinking about everything that could go wrong.
In costume, Ace of Blades hearkens back to both his mother's persona as a wisecracking yet compassionate heroine as well as Shining Shield's stoic man of few words attitude. Ace is mostly silent, though when he does speak it's usually to let out a sarcastic quip at the expense of whatever crook he's about to beat the crap out of. When dealing with civilians, he stays mostly reserved, but will freely offer words of comfort and assurance to those who are especially shaken up.
As far as hobbies, Scott is an avid audiophile, producing music in his free time, collecting vinyls and CDs, and attending concerts and festivals when he can scrape up the money for it. He's also a huge comic book nerd, owning several mint condition issues of comics licensing the stories of real world heroes like his mother and Shining Shield as well as fictional superheroes from companies like DC and Marvel. On top of these framed issues, he also has entire crates of loose issues and many trade paperbacks.
M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S
At the moment, Scott's two main goals are to make the streets of Calder City safer and gain renown as the inheritor of his mother's mantle. Everything else is secondary, including his civilian life. As much as he tries to deny it, he's also hoping that he can eventually be strong enough that he can avenge his mother in the event that Omega resurfaces, feeling that he won't be able to get closure until Omega is finally dead.
Absolute clown. Dark and gritty superhero fan fiction guaranteed or your money back.
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<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Absolute clown. Dark and gritty superhero fan fiction guaranteed or your money back.<br><br><div class="bb-center"><img src="https://i.ibb.co/dwHX9x5Z/q.gif" /><br><img src="https://media1.tenor.com/m/OO9sfTEs5eEAAAAd/marvel-rivals-moon-knight.gif" /><br><img src="https://media.tenor.com/k77Wq4b6rLMAAAAM/asian-guy.gif" /><br><img src="https://c.tenor.com/Y3LcKGaK7fsAAAAd/tenor.gif" /></div></div>
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