Blacklight
A brooding loner wannabe that Idolizes the bases' own Relic. Created by Riboflavin
INFORMATION:
NAME: Blacklight
ALIAS(S): Brooding Loner Wannabe Kid
FACTION: Maximal (former and future Predacon. Factions don't mean much to him)
TYPE: Beast Warrior
RANK: 6th Child, Lightspawn
BEAST MODE: Firefly
FUNCTION: Ninja
HEIGHT: 7 feet
SIZE: Medium
SEX: Male
AGE: 21 Stellar Cycles
THEME SONG: I don't know Metallica very well, but it's something by them I'm sure.
QUOTE: "Man. Why don't the evil demons ever posess me?"
APPEARANCE:
All you really need to know about Blacklight.
BEAST MODE:
Lightning bug, completely black, no highlights or trim. Tip of abdomen glows mainly in the UV range- a blacklight.
ROBOT MODE:
A lanky bot, clearly in early to mid adolescence. Muscular but thin, except for an abnormally large chest for the rest of his body. Compensating, probably overcompensating, for this are enough knives, swords, pointy edges and attitude to skewer an entire batallion. Pretty much every common place to strap a blade on to one's body has at least one blade there, and he has customized much of his shell detailing to make it look more "pissed". Most of his face is covered by an Optimus Prime meets ninja facemask, thus obscuring one obvious sign of his youthfulness, hiding his expression from enemies, and adding to that "pissed" thing. Sometimes he does have to take it off, though. Mainly to eat or drink. His actual face is quite young and bishounen looking (japanese anime prettyboy). Also on his head are two insect antennae above the forehead, a pointy crest thing between them, and a headphone-like assembly around the back of his head, with two more antennae, these ones thick, mechanical, and pointed at the ends. His insect head is split and forms shoulderpads, and his insect abdomen has split to become his pectorals and chest. At the center of his chest, where the abdomen halves are hinged, is an orb, gloving with UV light. Just below is a diamond shaped plate with a Maximal insignia on it. His lower torso is angular, robotic, and has many storage compartments (guess what's in them), and his arms and legs, as stated, are long and thin, but muscular looking. There are spikes extending from his knees and elbows. Save the UV glow of his optics and the orb (and the orb can be switched off), Blacklight is colored completely in shades of black.
STATS:
Strength: 6
Stamina: 8
Speed: 8
Skill: 9
Aim: 5
Discipline: 10
Intelligence: 7
Fire Power: 6
Luck: 4
SKILLS:
*Stealth
*Espionage - Specialties: Infiltrations, assasinations and sabotage
*Communications
*Hacking - Novice or less at network hacking, but extremely good with most security devices.
*Melee Weapons: Swords
*Melee Weapons: Fencing
*Melee Weapons: Knives
TRAITS:
Swordfighting: Has been training in it all of his short life, can use pratically any bladed weapon with skill. Favors the katana for stylistic reasons, but is actually better with smaller blades, perhaps due to a natural inclination, more likely due to that being his primary teacher's expertise.
Darklight: Chest orb sucks out light from the area around him within a 12 foot radius, fading out towards the edge of range. Works best in dark conditions when there are less photons to suck. Useful for hiding in the shadows and all that. Not an original ability by any means, but has there been anything original about Blacklight thus far?
Communications: Has had an encyclopedic knowledge of communications technology drilled into him by his mother. What's more, he actually remembers a good deal of it, and is good at working with what he does remember. Headphone-like thing he wears is an advanced com device, probably more advanced than anything currently existing in the universe. He doesn't know how to use half its capabilities, however. Can use it for interdimensional com with specific parties.
Tech/Hacking: For a brooding loner type, Blacklight is surprisingly technically adept. He is very good at being aware of and hacking security systems (tripwires, hidden cameras, sensor systems, etc), dealing with cloaking devices and the like, etc. Some knowledge of traditional computer hacking, but in that arena is oonly really good at dealing with a few specific situations.
Vision and Hearing: He emits UV rays, and can suck light from his environs. Of course he has nightvision and enhanced upper frequency vision. His hearing is also quite acute due to the long antennae on his head.
WEAPONS:
Swords
Blacklight himself would go on about how each and every one of his swords is unique, the finest in the galaxy, has a personal story attached to it, etc. I, on the other hand, don't care, so I'll just give a short, though not necessarily complete, listing: Straight longsword, katana, 2 wakisashis (curved japanese shortsword), tethered sickle, straight shortsword carried on body. All of it is very carefully secured so as not to make noise. Energy broadsword, daito (long katana), laser epee carried in subspace. Large number of swords is usually more of a burden than a benefit, but one he bears proudly.
Knives
Hidden in various compartments are an assortment of knives and daggers- 2 short throwing knives in each forearm (one of which has a device in the handle that prints out short messages), a tanto dagger in each calf, a thin stilleto dagger, waved blade dagger, and two large plain knives in his stomach, 1 short knife per foot, 1 serrated blade under each shoulder gaurd, and one small poison tipped knife under the facemask.
UV Rifle
Stored on his back, this is actually a quite powerful and accurate rifle, capable of seriously wounding the average bot at about a mile's distance with pinpoint accuracy. With a few modifications, it could even service as a sniper rifle. Blacklight is loathe to use this, however it is the only weapon that actually came with his body. It seems he was originally designed to be a marksman. The gun itself has the overall shape of a typical semiautomatic rifle, but its components are all very rounded and organic looking, like the interlocking parts of an insect's exoskeleton.
Acid Pellets
Pyramid shaped marble sized containers of powerful acid, spread on the floor in front of pursuers. If stepped upon, shatter and expose foot/wheel to powerful acid that will melt tires and serious impair one's ability to walk. Carries twenty in an easily accessable hip compartment, more in subspace.
EQUIPMENT:
Communications device: See Traits
Holotrainer: small device that projects a holographic sparring partner. Forcefields make blows administered by it seem real, but they are nondamaging. Variable difficuly levels, adaptive AI. Most well equipped training rooms will have a more advanced version, but this is portable.
PERSONALITY:
Blacklight is basically a brooding loner in training. Or, from another perspective, a brooding loner wannabe. He does have the ruthlessness, skill and discipline to be an effective modern ninja, which he is well on his way to becoming, but for the crucial brooding lonerness, he's just not quite there. Oh, he does brood, and brood well, and he is adequetely antisocial. There's just something about the way he tries to hard, or he suddenly becomes showoffy around cute fembots his age, or he idolizes Relic, or he keeps using teenage slang that makes the whole brooding loner schtick not quite work for him. He is, of course, blissfully unaware of this fact. Likewise he is unaware that his habit of seeking out dangerous missions, and his need to prove himself disqualify him from true brooding lonerdom, and that he probably annoys the hell out of his "mentors" (when he finds a true, established brooding loner he will become their "apprentice" and follow them around all the time. If his mentor disapproves, it just means he might not stick around just as long. As one would expect, several mentors have tried to kill him, but somehow none has yet succeeded, and Blacklight also didn't get the message, taking it as some sort of test). Blacklight likes to consider himself noble, but is not especially so. He will save the weak from the ravages of the strong occaisionally, if the odds are well in his favor, or the weak happens to be a cute fembot. He is quite obsessec with the idea of sacrificing one's life for a greater purpose, but has yet to really find any purpose he finds worth his life. Some observers say Blacklight is merely going through an adolescent identity crisis stage. Others say the crucial missing part of his brooding is morality- he feels no remorse for any pain or suffering he causes, and he probably never will. Still others say he's just another glitched up Pred. All blame it on his family.
HISTORY:
Blacklight is one of the Lightspawn, children of the Predacons Prism and Lightspeed. Information about Prism and Lightspeed can be found on the Predacon and Vehicon boards, I have a comic or two featuring Blacklight and the Lightspawn on the General board, and Psyckogod has posted or will post a short story about the Lightspawn as a family unit. Basically, though, Prism is a mercenary, Lightspeed an ex-Secret Police agent, and they've been training their family into a black ops mercenary team, and the most up-and-coming one on the scene to boot.
Blacklight and his slightly older sister Optica were born when their mother was just getting on to a serious hardcore training kick. Their childhoods were almost exclusively devoted to learning their crafts. Optica mainly specialized in computers and commnications, while Blacklight took to stealth missions and melee combat, even though his parents first tried to steer him towards sniping. It was just as well, because the family already had a sniper, though one Lightspeed didn't especially trust. Around when Blacklight was 6, he became obsessed with a dark, lone ninja character he saw on TV, and started emulating that character. Soon he found similar personas in comic books, and then became aware of several real life bots of that type, mainly because they tended to be in the same business as the Lightspawn. His father would go on a rant at least once a week about Sphinx, a fembot who was a constant torment to him, and therefore, in the eyes of some of his kids, really friggin' cool. Though Sphinx was not a brooding loner, Blacklight did somehow learn of an associate of hers that was. Relic. in the ensuing stellar cycles, Blacklight managed to learn all about Relic, put posters of him all over his room, etc. Questions of how he found out so much about an obscure assasin who mostly keeps to himself, or how there ever arose a market in Relic posters aside, this obsession, via the gods of Murphy's Law, pretty much ensured that Blacklight would never get to meet his idol in person. Instead, he would go off for several months at a time to train under other spies, assasins and warriors he would come across. By train, I mean follow them around incessantly until they tried to kill him. Impressively, Blacklight hasn't been killed yet. It seems he is either very lucky, or very underrated. You can scroll up and check his "luck" stat.
About a stellar cycle ago, Optica and Lightspeed completed work on a highly advanced communications device, capable of sending messages between dimensions. Combine it with an off the shelf transporter, and that means travel to other dimensions. Lightspeed and Prism explicitly forbid this, as they've had enough bad experiences already with parallel universes, time travel, and all that messiness. This, of course, doesn't stop anyone from trying it. Optica made the mistake of showing Blacklight how he could travel to an alternate dimension, stay there for months or years at a time, and then be back by dinner. He then monitored extradimensional transmissions for a month, until his monitoring device picked up the keywords it was looking for. With some detective work and extrapolation he figured out that the Relic of a certain universe was on a dangerous mission with a team of mercs, and one of their leaders was known as Jungle, a figure that looked to be no less a dark warrior than Relic. But where were they? Scanning through highly encrypted transmissions on an alternate universe Cybertron he could do, but scanning an entire alternate universe? He could never hope to do that. So, of course, he tricked Optica into doing it. Optica gave him her results, then, as Blacklight set up the transporter and changed his programming so he'd register as a Maximal, figured out she'd been used. That resulted in a lot of yelling, mostly about how abysmally stupid Blacklight was being. The Dark Wannabe, of course, ignored her completely. He is now sneaking about somewhere on Andronicus.
Graphics Provided by Riboflavin
