Reflection

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

Location - Madison Bank - Fighting Criminal Scum @Argetlam350

Between Stardust and the four remaining bank robbers, was another, slightly more super-villainy bank robber. He stopped, glowing eyes focusing on the wild haired girl with the skull painted onto her pale skin. Her outfit was rather clown-ish if he was going to have to name it. A bright red with some other stuff slapped on till she looked like rainbow vomit. But, what really took his attention was the claws. Big metal looking things attached to her arms, to a point where it looked like delicate wasn't in her style. Was this a regular crook, or somebody worse? Ziggy took a step closer, eyes focusing on her own. "I'm trying to stop this bank robbery. And I don't think that's a game. But I got what you were saying. Agent Rooster says that same thing all the time." Ziggy added that last bit, mostly because he didn't want to come off as rude, or worse ignorant.

The criminal before him was probably trying to buy time. He doubted the only robber would be trying to fight a hero, so, he had to move fast. Knock this robber out, and move on. Taking a deep breath... He charged. No guns, so he knew she was a close range fighter. But if getting up close helped him mask his power for a moment longer. His fist pulled back, throwing a punch right at Scorn. If he made contact, crystals would began to sprout, immobilizing or weighing down the point of contact. He hoped for a moment she'd try to catch the easily telegraphed attack with one of her clawed hands, removing that from the playing field right off the bat. "My name is Stardust, what's yours?" He shouted that out, as if it was some kind of witty one liner. "And I'm here to knock your nightlights out!"

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

Location - Madison Bank - Stopping a Crime @Argetlam350

One doesn't need to be a superchild to hear an explosion. Nor does one need to be particularly observant. But Ziggy was both, and he could see the smoke billowing out in the distance. It wasn't exactly subtle. And best of all, it was in Homewood, not to far from Young. He could tell from the building structure, since the obvious distinctions in brickwork made it an easy r- Nevermind. The ground blurred beneath his feet, and Ziggy jumped from the roof of the apartment he had been standing on. The ground thumping below his feet as he landed on the next room, and then the next. He was close enough to the border that this was a few easy jumps for him, and then, he was teetering on the edge of a building. Overlooking the bank as the dust was already starting to clear. He stood out too much anyway with his glowing body that he was thankful for that.

Ziggy could go in through the roof, no... Agent Mother always said he had to limit damage to buildings. Since repairs were costly. Instead, he had to go in through the doors. After all, while it'd be obvious, he'd deny the criminals the chance to escape. That alone was worth the risk. "Look out down below." Ziggy whispered to himself, arms spread out, and he leapt to the ground. The impact was enough to rattle him back to reality, and he approached the building. "Criminals! You are under arrest. Put down your weapons, and surrender." The words weren't brave. In fact, from the alien boy they sounded weak. As if despite rehearsing it a million times he didn't actually understand what he was saying.

The three criminals in the lobby may have been surprised, but then they started opening fire. Bullets struck Ziggy's body, and he charged them. The bullets whirled away, deflecting into the ground and nearby furniture. One bullet smacked into the gunner's leg, sending him to the floor. The other two either continued to fire as it was their only plan, or maybe they were trying to warn the boss. Either way, it was only about two seconds of gunfire, before it stopped. The guns began to creak and snap as crystals grew inside them. Ziggy's hands clasped around the barrels. The third gunner, who by that point had stopped firing to nurse his leg wound was the first to go down. Ziggy's right leg cracked against his skull, knocking him cold. The other two found their hands encased in crystal. The one on the right smacked into his ally when Ziggy lifted him off the ground, knocking into the nearest teller desk. One was out cold, and the third passed out when the monitor from a computer fell into his head. Crystal was used to weigh down their legs, and the superboy began to make his way to the back of the bank. A deep breath, and he was ready.

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

Location - Upper South District - Roof of the Capitol Building

He looked up the stars, and he felt... Well, that's not important now. Is it? Ziggy Stardust looked into the sky above, to the stars above him, and he felt something. The boy from the stars, with blue skin and crystal growing from his skin. So obviously not human that nobody even thought he could be. But none the less, he was there on the roof of the capitol building looking into the sky. He wore a hoodie. Loose and baggy clothing, almost as if he was just another high school student. He could probably get away with it too, if high schoolers had glowing hair.
"I was looking for you." The voice that crept up from behind was gentle. Almost motherly. Made sense that it came from the person in charge of Ziggy.
"I just wanted to get out, you know?" Ziggy said, brushing his hands through his hair. His hair, was synthetic. It wasn't warm. It was cold, like ice, and the scientists figured it was some kind of incredibly flexible crystalline structure. Probably using the template of the astronauts whos bodies had been used as material in his birth. "All those meetings are boring."
"Yes they are. But they're important. And they involve you." Mother took a seat, right next to Ziggy. She was the only one who ever did. Others gave him distance, but not her.
"He can complain all he wants, but General Howzer said he wants me here. And he'll get his way." Ziggy grumbled out, thinking of how the mayor was always complaining. "I have enough problem dealing with the turf war with heroes and villains! I can't deal with some space messiah!" Ziggy did a nearly perfect impersonation of the fat, and clearly balding under that toupe, mayor. Though the slight reverberation of his voice kinda ruined an otherwise perfect show.
"Of course. And even if the mayor did have a say, we'd find you someplace else to test your powers."
"That's all you care about, huh?"
"Don't be that way."
"What way?"
"You know, that way were you act like we're only using you. Putting you through tests to turn you into a weapon for US superiority overseas."
"General Howzer says so."
"Well, he's only the general. And you're a private citizen. That took a lot of work getting you classified that way. The whole born on US soil thing took a lot of convincing."
"The judge was so shocked when I started growing those crystals." Ziggy laughed, remembering all the swearing about aliens and monsters.

Agent Mother smiled, and patted the starchild on the back. "Now, remember why you're doing all this."
"Do I have to say it out loud?" Ziggy said, smiling at his handler. She was the only person who really got him. Better than some of his professors at the university. They just didn't get it. He was smart, despite only being about four years old as far as humans could be concerned. And yet, despite all the superheros running around, a creature from space just stood out in a weird way.
"Not really. Just do your school work. Eat all your meals, and don't get hurt." Mother whispered that last bit.
"Oh come on, I haven't even run into any crime, and I've been in this city for a week."
"That's because you glow, and don't stray too far from the Capitol building."
"Yeah, but you said I have to stay close."
"For tonight, you have my FULL permission to travel through the whole city. Just um... Don't go past Northview or Young. I'll give you more room once you're better with directions."
Ziggy smiled, and then, he jumped from the roof. Spinning in the air just enough to salute Agent Mother, and he was off. Without the need to rest, he was already running down the city streets, with the ground slightly cracked on the pavement below from his impact.
"And don't go jumping from high places! You may not get hurt, but the streets aren't you!" Agent Mother shouted, before watching Ziggy vault over a car. It seemed he was heading towards Young. Not a bad place to go looking for crime. Sighing softly, Mother picked up her phone, and began to dial. "Agent Mother here. Subject Stardust is making his way towards Young. Let the authorities know, since not everybody is used to the alien boy yet."

Young was part of the poor district. It also happened to have the nicest rooftops. This was because the whole district was layered on top of itself. This made it easy to leap from rooftop to rooftop. And there was a rush in that. The way the city seemed to stretch around him. Area 52, where he'd been raised for four years was so small, full of walls and barricades. Here. There wasn't any walls. No desert to get in the way. Here, he could do anything, and that was so worth living for. So to the people below, there was a blue boy leaping about on the roofs of the building, and if they hadn't watched the news lately, they might have been terrified.

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

Ziggy Stardust

Space Oddity

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓

^{“Ground Control to Major Tom.”}

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

✶ BASICS ✶^_-

---

full name / nickname(s)

Stardust "Ziggy"

gender / sexuality

Male?

occupation

Student / government property

^_-✶ IN DEPTH ✶

---

personality

We are all stardust. But Stardust is not us. He's not human. And he doesn't really understand us. Because deep down, he's barely human. He looks like us, in a way. But he's too smooth. His skin is like ice. And yet, he's hot on the inside. He's full of emotions, boiling and frothing about like a hot cauldron ready to burst. He's like a child. His empathy though, is heightened. Some say it's because of the crystal and how it preys on others. Some think it's just natural. But he feels the pain of others, and their joys. In a way, he may not even understand his own emotions, but rather how others feel.
Considering his mostly enclosed life, he tends to live a pretty orderly life. Everything has a place, a purpose, and a time of use. In a way, disrupting his organized life schedule only makes him angry, and causes him to lash out against others. Controlling his emotions though, is difficult.

superpower

Ziggy Particles Embodiment
Referred to at the Ziggy Stardust particle. But more formally just referred to as Stardust because Ziggy can't be said with a straight face. The Stardust particle is a unique material from the depths of space. Nobody really knows exactly where it comes from, but it's almost organic. Not fully organic. Living crystal is the best way to describe it. It's almost like a parasite, that latches onto proteins, and like a virus it begins to attack and destroy the connection of the protein strands. One could say it's digesting it. The crystal grows and spreads as it breaks apart protein strands, and spreads over the human body.
Stardust, is made of the Stardust particle. His body formed entirely from the crystal, giving him an alien physiology. While he does seem to have parts of the human body (brain, hearts, organs) he lacks a stomach. And instead seems to rely completely on a meat based diet, which is needed to sustain his crystalline body.
Stardust can generate on command crystals from his body, which he can use to tear through dirt, stone, and other such things. The crystal itself is considered up there with diamonds as one of the hardest materials, giving Stardust that same kind of near indestructibility.
The crystal is known to have a few weaknesses though. Particularly powerful vibrations can cause the crystal to crack at the right frequency, and incredibly heat (upwards of 2800 degrees Fahrenheit.) can cause the crystal to become brittle.

Pros/Cons

Pros:
- Durable Crystal makes up the basis of his body.
- Crystals can be grown, or projected from his body, creating projectiles or barriers.
- The crystal grows as it breaks apart proteins (Meat) so a cut will cause it to start growing on the infected tissue. (Think flesh eating crystal.)

Cons:
- Vulnerable to extreme heat. (Makes the crystal brittle.)
- Vulnerable to sonic vibrations. (Causes it to crack.)
- Requires a constant and heavy meat based diet. (Growing too much crystal without eating enough protein is bad for his health.)

Side Effects:
- Glowing body parts
- Doesn't have traditional human skin. (Skin is more smooth, like glass, and is composed of crystal.)
- Can absorb the crystals back into his body.
- Meat based diet.
- Doesn't sleep
- Only one of his kind

backstory

25 years ago, NASA launched the ship, the USS Stardust into the sky above. Space, a short trip to the moon and back. And then it vanished. Transmissions cut out, and they were never seen again. For 20 years, the fate of the three astronauts onboard was a mystery, with only speculation regarding their fates. Until one day, the USS Stardust crashed into the ocean, and the three astronauts on board were discovered. All three dead. Preserved by a layer of crystal that had formed over their bodies. In a way, it seemed, parasitic. Drawing life from the corpses.

For over a year the bodies were kept in a lab, to be studied and analyzed. It was Decembers 25th when it happened. The bodies began to move, and from their three separate rooms, they moved towards each other. As if they were seeking each other. Until all three bodies met, and began to merge. The heat from the fusion was like a furnace, billowing heat through the facility. But it was over in a minute, and suddenly, there was only one. A single entity, like a child in a way. A perfect human, but not really. It had a mind. It had a heart. But it was different. Crystal grew from its body, as if to protect it. It was cold to the touch, and seemed to study everything around it.

For four years 'Stardust' as he was called lived inside Area 52. Where he learned to be human. Until finally, it was decided to release him into the world. With Operative Mother as his contact to the government and military, he was set out into Centerville. To be a hero of sorts. To test his powers, by helping America. Until he was ready.

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

@Metronome I'll think about it. I'll try adjusting the perimeters of the infection. Or replace it with something else of the sort. Since his heavy meat diet is part of how the crystal works.

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

Maybe he should tell people that when he gets into fights with them :P if he hits a random thug, they run off and hide, and don't know how to fix the problem, thats probably considered murder.

@Metronome

His go to method for fighting is "Infect and force them to submit." Since he has very little hand to hand or combat training in general. Also, it's a long enough period of time for them to go to the hospital by the time it encompasses an arm or leg.

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

Accepted!

Quick question though. Can he infect other people with the crystals?

@Metronome

If you get hit with a crystal, it will slowly begin to grow. It can take upwards of 24 hours to grow over an adult human being. More beyond that for it to kill them. (Very painful.) But, he can easily remove the crystal from those infected.
As for if he can turn regular humans into strange crystal alien things like himself? I haven't thought about that, but for now I'd say no.
Also, if infected, lighting a match and burning the infected area is a good way to solve the problem. As mentioned before, it's adverse to heat.

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

Okay, I added the pros/cons and even some smaller side effects like how he doesn't have a traditional sleep cycle. @Metronome I'm open to adding more cons, and we can discuss that.

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

@Metronome I'll try writing up a pros/cons list to help people understand his power set better. Since I did kinda over complicate it.

Local, Organic, Freerange Superheroes

And I think I've got my hero ready.

Ziggy Stardust

Space Oddity

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓

^{“Ground Control to Major Tom.”}

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

✶ BASICS ✶^_-

---

full name / nickname(s)

Stardust "Ziggy"

gender / sexuality

Male?

occupation

Student / government property

^_-✶ IN DEPTH ✶

---

personality

We are all stardust. But Stardust is not us. He's not human. And he doesn't really understand us. Because deep down, he's barely human. He looks like us, in a way. But he's too smooth. His skin is like ice. And yet, he's hot on the inside. He's full of emotions, boiling and frothing about like a hot cauldron ready to burst. He's like a child. His empathy though, is heightened. Some say it's because of the crystal and how it preys on others. Some think it's just natural. But he feels the pain of others, and their joys. In a way, he may not even understand his own emotions, but rather how others feel.
Considering his mostly enclosed life, he tends to live a pretty orderly life. Everything has a place, a purpose, and a time of use. In a way, disrupting his organized life schedule only makes him angry, and causes him to lash out against others. Controlling his emotions though, is difficult.

superpower

Ziggy Particles Embodiment
Referred to at the Ziggy Stardust particle. But more formally just referred to as Stardust because Ziggy can't be said with a straight face. The Stardust particle is a unique material from the depths of space. Nobody really knows exactly where it comes from, but it's almost organic. Not fully organic. Living crystal is the best way to describe it. It's almost like a parasite, that latches onto proteins, and like a virus it begins to attack and destroy the connection of the protein strands. One could say it's digesting it. The crystal grows and spreads as it breaks apart protein strands, and spreads over the human body.
Stardust, is made of the Stardust particle. His body formed entirely from the crystal, giving him an alien physiology. While he does seem to have parts of the human body (brain, hearts, organs) he lacks a stomach. And instead seems to rely completely on a meat based diet, which is needed to sustain his crystalline body.
Stardust can generate on command crystals from his body, which he can use to tear through dirt, stone, and other such things. The crystal itself is considered up there with diamonds as one of the hardest materials, giving Stardust that same kind of near indestructibility.
The crystal is known to have a few weaknesses though. Particularly powerful vibrations can cause the crystal to crack at the right frequency, and incredibly heat (upwards of 2800 degrees Fahrenheit.) can cause the crystal to become brittle.

Pros/Cons

Pros:
- Durable Crystal makes up the basis of his body.
- Crystals can be grown, or projected from his body, creating projectiles or barriers.
- The crystal grows as it breaks apart proteins (Meat) so a cut will cause it to start growing on the infected tissue. (Think flesh eating crystal.)

Cons:
- Vulnerable to extreme heat. (Makes the crystal brittle.)
- Vulnerable to sonic vibrations. (Causes it to crack.)
- Requires a constant and heavy meat based diet. (Growing too much crystal without eating enough protein is bad for his health.)

Side Effects:
- Glowing body parts
- Doesn't have traditional human skin. (Skin is more smooth, like glass, and is composed of crystal.)
- Can absorb the crystals back into his body.
- Meat based diet.
- Doesn't sleep
- Only one of his kind

backstory

25 years ago, NASA launched the ship, the USS Stardust into the sky above. Space, a short trip to the moon and back. And then it vanished. Transmissions cut out, and they were never seen again. For 20 years, the fate of the three astronauts onboard was a mystery, with only speculation regarding their fates. Until one day, the USS Stardust crashed into the ocean, and the three astronauts on board were discovered. All three dead. Preserved by a layer of crystal that had formed over their bodies. In a way, it seemed, parasitic. Drawing life from the corpses.

For over a year the bodies were kept in a lab, to be studied and analyzed. It was Decembers 25th when it happened. The bodies began to move, and from their three separate rooms, they moved towards each other. As if they were seeking each other. Until all three bodies met, and began to merge. The heat from the fusion was like a furnace, billowing heat through the facility. But it was over in a minute, and suddenly, there was only one. A single entity, like a child in a way. A perfect human, but not really. It had a mind. It had a heart. But it was different. Crystal grew from its body, as if to protect it. It was cold to the touch, and seemed to study everything around it.

For four years 'Stardust' as he was called lived inside Area 52. Where he learned to be human. Until finally, it was decided to release him into the world. With Operative Mother as his contact to the government and military, he was set out into Centerville. To be a hero of sorts. To test his powers, by helping America. Until he was ready.