Meltdown
Yet Another Lightspawn, Mentally unstable and strapped with explosives, to him life is a video game. Created by Psyckogod
Information:
Name: Meltdown
Faction: Predacons
Type: Beast Warrior
Rank: 5th Child, Lightspawn
Size: 7 ft
Function: Demolitionist
Gender: Male
Age: 27 stellar cycles
Theme Song: "Superbeast" by Rob Zombie
Beast Mode: A firefly, colored black with red highlights. Its antennae are all bent out of shape and the wings are ratty with burn marks and a few small ragged holes in them. While flying, Meltdown tends to swoop and swerve and zip around completely arbitrarily, as if he were flying while drunk. He gives off red light- the color of emergency lights, appropriately enough.
Robot Mode: Meltdown is a skinny, gawky insectile Predacon colored in shades of black and red. He has an angular, grinning face with a pointed chin, mismatched optics (one round and yellow, one narrow and green), and bent, zig-zagging antennae. He has wide, membranous wings with sparking-electricity-looking patterns on them. The wings are torn and ragged, but still fit for flying. He has chestplates with lightning-bolt red patterns on them, and small curving shoulder pads. He wears round gauntlets with various odds and ends stored in them, and the right has his hookshot embedded in a side compartment. He has long legs with wide, klunky feet. He has a large belt with multiple pockets, multiple grenades hanging from clips, and other explosives. His BFG is slung over his back. He is very energetic and wild, and never stops talking in a voice that sounds the same way. He is wired with explosives at all time- some minor, some major, some armed, some not- and it's always a gamble to try and hit him. You never know when something big might go off.
Statistics:
Strength: 7
Speed: 8
Skill: 6
Aim: 6
Discipline: 5
Stamina: 10
Intelligence: 5
Firepower: 10
Luck: 6
TOTAL: 63
Skills:
Autofire Weapons
Demolitions
Explosives
Flight: Winged
Gunnery
Heavy Weapons
History: Blacklight was constructed as the fifth child of Prism and Lightspeed, a pair of Predacon soldiers who had fought together for some time before settling down to get married and have a family. But in Prism and Lightspeed's case, "settling down" meant "forming a freelance mercenary unit to make some serious cash". Calling themselves the Lightspawn, they travelled the galaxy in their family-size warship, the Ugly Duckling, and gained notoriety for being nigh-uncatchable and very good at what they did. Meltdown was born at a point where most of this hadn't even happened yet- he's among the first five Lightspawn, so he was born at a time when his parents were still new to parenthood. Meltdown was a troublemaker, constantly causing problems for his harried mother and father, and they sought desperately to find some way to keep him occupied for five minutes. Nothing worked, until the pivotal night. Meltdown, still very young, woke from his sleep and wanting some water, wandered into his parents' room to find the two heavily engaged in a certain act that would be responsible for the conception of Blacklight. Angered, Prism slid out, hopped off the bed, and tossed a handheld game that his wife had been fooling with earlier at Meltdown and shut the door.
He might as well have taken Meltdown on a field trip into the Matrix to get Primus' autograph. Meltdown was transfixed. As a boy who got relatively little attention except when he was causing trouble (and even then he didn't get much done), he was bowled over by the idea that he could do whatever he wanted in these varied, open electronic worlds. He could shoot down alien armadas, he could stomp giant reptiles into oblivion, he could turn blocks around in the air and make other blocks disappear with them! He could eat ghosts, destroy armored mechs, fight ninjas hand-to-hand, summon guardian spirits to battle, get his ass kicked by Mike Tyson, drive an ice cream truck through apocalyptic battlefields, defeat Mother Brain and save Princess Toadstool...all in the space of one day's worth of gaming. It was utopia. And best of all, he could blow stuff up. From that point onward, through most of the formative years of Meltdown's life, his parents weren't Prism and Lightspeed. His parents were video games.
Unlike his older sister Optica and his brother Blacklight, Meltdown wasn't pushed to perfection by Lightspeed during later years. She'd just about given up on him, thinking him to have no talent, and for his part, Prism got tired of Meltdown after being whipped at Spark Kalibur 4 for the forty-seventh time and summarily mocked for it. But Meltdown's skill was within him all along, it just took a certain catalyst to discover it. After a particularly frustrating gaming session (Meltdown was an absolute pro at this point, but only Castlevania can reduce the greatest players to steaming piles of frustration), he picked up a baseball bat and smashed the vidscreen so hard it exploded into glass and circuitry. He stared at the TV, transfixed. He BROKE something! And it EXPLODED!! Not just in an extended session of Smuggler's Theft Emergency, but for REAL!! This phenomenon had to be explored further. Meltdown had already displayed rudimentary knowledge of weapons mechanics in the past, but nothing spectacular. But he began putting that knowledge to the full, constructing pipe bombs, plastique, Molotov cocktails, stinkbombs, and other things that went boom, calling upon munitions websites and textbooks to teach him the necessary skills. Prism noted this rise in talent, and took Meltdown under his wing, teaching the boy the things he hadn't worried about, like how to defuse bombs and how to accurately place them on a given structure for efficient destruction. (Prism was no demolitionist, but he'd worked with a few Bots in the past who were- or at least acted like it.)
Meltdown grew into an avid demolitionist, and began blowing anything and everything up. Most of his other siblings avoided him for fear of explosions. One of the only ones that bothered to hang out with him was his older brother, Nucleos. Nucleos and Meltdown grew close, and when the Lightspawn formed a mercenary unit, would go on to become partners within the unit, working together on many assignments. During this time, Meltdown also formed a vague kinship with Optica, and delighted in antagonizing his other siblings- most especially Blacklight. Meltdown became the chief demolitionist and explosives expert of the Lightspawn. One night, he was working on a prototypical (re: extremely dangerous) transwarp bomb that would theoretically blow its target into another universe. Kind of like launching the Baxter Building into space. Meltdown dropped the bomb in front of an old building to test it out and began to high-tail it out of the bomb's range...but he accidentally set its timer for 03 seconds instead of 30 seconds. The bomb went off, causing both Meltdown and the building to disappear. The building landed on top of a pair of blonde teenage twins on Earth in the middle of filming a movie about going to Paris. Meltdown landed on top of his brother Blacklight, in the middle of Andronicus.
Personality: Meltdown is living in his own little world, but he'll let you visit if you've got enough quarters. Raised by video games and inspired by explosives, Meltdown may be insane, but he's also an extremely capable demolitionist. He has spent more collective hours of his life with a controller/joystick/gun peripheral/handheld in his hands and his optics fixed on a screen, than he has spent eating or sleeping combined. He is an absolute video game master in every genre and catagory, and can school anyone at any game. He especially enjoys first-person shooters, fighting games, and gun peripheral arcade games, but also likes old side-scrolling beat-em-ups, RPGs, driving/car destruction games, platformers, sports games, wrestling games, survival horror, real-time strategy, stealth simulation, puzzle games, and massively multiplayer online RPGs, plus other categories I haven't even mentioned. He has become so wrapped up in the digital world that he no longer recognizes any reality outside of it. He constantly references video games, acts as if he were in one, and is almost always playing one, and trying to get people to play one with him. He loves kicking peoples' asses at whatever game they fancy, and will good-naturedly mock them for their loss afterwards. He rarely loses, and when he does, rather than throw a fit, he congratulates the person who beat him- and automatically challenges them to a rematch. He loves a challenge. He cites Earth games to be the best, old and new, but also plays every Cybertronian game that comes down the line. He has some obscure method of being able to buy back any game system he smashes out of frustration, and always has at least a dozen handhelds on him, complete with several games for each, on him at any time. He has kind of a sixth sense for locating arcades in the area, and can always find one around if given half a chance.
As a Lightspawn, Meltdown had to grow up with Prism and Lightspeed for parents, but shockingly, harbors no ill will towards them. He likes his father, and dearly enjoys beating him at games and watching his annoyed reaction. He likes his mother just as much, and tries to get her to play games with him, but she knows better than to even try and school Meltdown. He has developed a friendship with his older brother Nucleos, and works with him often, as well as one with Optica. Reasons for the latter are unknown; it could be because she expresses an occasional affinity for video games, and is such a polar opposite to him. Meltdown enjoys antagonizing most of his other siblings, and occasionally his parents- he especially loves tormenting his brother Blacklight, as well as his older sister Spectra. Currently, Meltdown is at a point in his development akin to 16 or 17 for a human, and displays all the qualities you expect from a teenager- except for the annoying angst periods and inexplicable sexual situations you see from the ones on TV and movies. He loves to eat junk food (favorites include hot dogs, chips, cheeseburgers, tacos, nachos, cheese spray out of the can, and hamburger-bacon-pepperoni four-cheese energon pizzas), watches professional wrestling and violent movies, and can lounge around for hours in front of the TV with Nucleos and their baby sister Alice. He occasionally chases cute girls, to varying degrees of success. Note to the ladies: He'll like you if you play video games. He'll love you if you can give him a challenge. He'll MARRY you if you actually manage to beat him.
Meltdown is very excitable and over-the-top, and enjoys being crude and wild. He belches just to annoy people, plays practical jokes, coins weird phrases and terminology, and speaks l33t when he gets excited. He has no regard for his own safety (or the sanctity of public and private property) as far as his work goes, and has blown himself up so many times he's developed an ultra-tough shell to make up for all the booms. He is given to victory dances, taunts, and poses when coming out on top of any situation, but is very hard to get down and bounces right back from disparagement. When he makes a friend, he keeps that friend, and will stay around to support them and hang out with them. He loves his family and would fight to the end to protect them. And he's come to Andronicus for a good time. Ph34r.
Weapons/Equipment/Special Abilities:
Armament:
Various Specialty Bombs- To save the time of listing each type specifically, all of Meltdown's different bombs and explosives will be listed here. He keeps on him, in varying numbers and intensities- plastique, Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, cluster bombs, sticky bombs, smoke bombs, shrapnel bombs, tripwire bombs, stinkbombs, paintbombs, remote-control drone bombs, dynamite sticks, old-fashioned gunpowder bombs, water mines, remote mines, timed mines, proximity mines, and all sorts of different timers and detonators. Of course, he can mix and match any of the above to get the desired results.
Grenades- Meltdown has a large amount of old-fashioned pull-the-pin grenades that he uses to take out multiple enemies or clear a room of baddies. They look like small, green metal orbs, with steel pins set into the top and a cross-hatch pattern all over them. Upon pulling the pin, the grenade will go off in a space of five seconds. Meltdown likes to arm multiple grenades at once and throw them together, or juggle them and toss them one-by-one, or roll them like bowling balls, or bounce them off walls, or kick them around like a hackey-sack, etc. He's skilled with them, to say the least. He keeps a large supply of grenades on him at any given time.
BFG 9000- I'll leave you to decipher the acronym describing this massive weapon. Perhaps it's Big Fun Gun? This is a long metallic cannon that fires huge balls of green electric energy capable of taking out whole squadrons and destroying small buildings. It has a wide, round black barrel, and the whole of it is silver with multiple gauges and switches, and a black fold-out stock. It is powered by rechargeable plasma cells, but can only fire once before needing to recharge- a process that takes five minutes or so. Meltdown devised this weapon after playing heavy doses of an old Earth first-person shooting game. When not in use, the BFG is stored over his back.
Beast Mode: None
Equipment:
Hookshot- Inspired by an Earth role-playing game, Meltdown is equipped with an automatic, self-retracting grappling hook. It is set into the side of his right gauntlet, and with a flick of his wrist, a steel spear on a chain a few dozen feet long shoots out and latches into a wall or ceiling, pulling Meltdown forward until the chain is fully retracted. The hook is sharp enough and the grappling fast enough for it to pierce a variety of strong surfaces. Meltdown can also conceivably use the hookshot as a weapon, piercing enemies with it and pulling them towards him.
Commanders' Notes:
"He's insane. Very insane. I'm not going to even try and simply tell you he's 'special', because he isn't. He's insane. He can blow the strongest mercenary stronghold into free-floating atoms...but that doesn't excuse his propensity for shouting 'Flawless Victory' at us afterwards and posing." -Prism, father
"A psychotic pyromaniac with absolutely no regard for the safety of himself or others. No crew is complete without one. *pause* That last bit was sarcasm, by the way." -Lightspeed, mother
"Ugh. I HATE that little toad. If you see him, tell him the next time he rigs my room with Semtex, I'm shoving that joystick right up his skid. That wasn't innuendo or anything." -Spectra, older sister
"EVIL!! I mean, he's a good guy, lots of laughs...but still definitely evil!" -Nucleos, older brother
Quotes:
"FATALITY!!!"
"Ph33r my 3vil l33t b0mb sk1llz!"
"Wooooo!!! Super mega destruction bonus!! 1,00,000,000 points for destroying public property, 1-up for every civilian life taken! BOOM!!!"
"I need scissors! Sixty-one!"
Graphics Provided by Riboflavin
