PERSONAL

Gender: Male

Kit: Natural

Location: Nyala, Darfur, Sudan

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Hero

Team: Solo Hero

VITAL STATS

Strength: standard (rank 1)

Agility: standard (rank 1)

Mind: standard (rank 1)

Body: standard (rank 1)

Spirit: (rank )

Charisma: (rank )

RECORD

Fame Points: 0

Personal Wins: 2

Personal Losses: 4

Team Wins: 0

Team Losses: 0

Tourney Wins: 0

Tourney Losses: 0

STATUS

Status: Active

me like stuf

Finally, after fourteen months, it was happening. Rain. The stuff came down as if the gods were pouring it from thousands of cosmic fire hoses. Down it went into the parched and expectant mouths of the emaciated children below. It was the best day they had had in months.

Babatu sat motionless on the tin roof, watching them play in the mud, most of them naked, and one hardly able to move due to her extreme scoliosis. Babatu was once one of them, small, defenseless, ignorant. He had played in the mud like it was gold, rejoicing in the rainfall, thinking it was the only way in the world to get clean water. Well, it was for these people.

“For us,” he whispered, reminding himself that he was still one of them.

It had only been two years since that fateful incident, on a night just like this one. He had been herding his father’s cattle, trying to hurry so he could get inside and get a taste of the delicious water his mother was no doubt collecting, when his herd started running. Stampeding, really. He couldn’t understand why, but something must have spooked them.

He had started to run after them when the loudest and most jarring thunderclap he had ever heard stopped him dead. He looked up, almost expecting to see some god lifting his massive hand to bang on his heavenly drum once again. What he saw instead was a blinding white flash and then… blackness.

He had awoken to find his cattle gone, spread around for miles probably, for which his father would most definitely whip him. However, the cattle were the least of his worries. As soon as he had opened his eyes, he had leapt up and ran, thinking there was a fire directly in front of him. But the fire pursued him, white hot. He stopped, and looked down. He WAS the fire. It had terrified him, but as soon as the fear registered, the flame was gone, and he was looking at his own body again.

“Curious,” he thought, “I wonder…” and with a though, the flame was back, and though it must have been several time hotter than any fire Babatu had ever seen, it didn’t hurt. In fact, in felt good, like it was warming the very core of him.

The memory was disturbed as he heard a rumbling in the distance that wasn’t thunder or the patter of distant rain. Babatu stood, the tin roof groaning underneath him. Yes, far in the distance, he could see them coming. In their jeeps and hummers, they were coming.

He could feel it building, the anticipation. Soon his vision would go red and his ears would ring. He knew it well. A mixture of fear and battle lust he always felt when confronting these warmongers. He could remember his first time standing up his oppressors, and the memory swept him away.

It had been two weeks since the lightning had given him his strange gift. Two weeks since the beating his father had reluctantly doled out, and nearly all the cattle had been found again. They were busy, Babatu and his family, but in his limited spare time, he would walk far enough away to be out of sight, strip naked, and feel again the strange and comforting fire. He had found that with concentration, he could extend his entity of pure flame a few feet in every direction, and with even more focus, could shoot a stream of fire out of what would have been his hands.

But turning himself into flame was extremely tiring. He could only sustain it for a minute, sometimes less, and it always left him breathless. In time, however, he learned to be a human flamethrower while staying in his corporeal form, which was much less taxing. He learned accuracy by marking the sand with an x and hitting it from ten, twenty yards away. He learned to use his entire body as a weapon, firing not only with his hands, but with his feet, his head and, most impressively in his own humble opinion, his… well, lets just say he did it while peeing.

It was on one of these occasions when he was just about to leave to practice that he heard a commotion at the eastern end of the village. Someone was shouting something indecipherable and there was a bang of metal on metal. He ran over to investigate, weaving between the haphazardly assemble shacks and huts.

When he reached the abode of one of his mother’s friends, he saw that it couldn’t have been worse. Kai’li, son of the most notorious drug lord in Darfur was holding the family at gunpoint.

“I decide when you’re done! Do you understand?! Me! You’ll sell this shit until you’re dead, and then your kids’ll sell it, and then their kids!” He kicked the father in the stomach, doubling him over. They had tried to stop selling, anyone would. The money might keep you alive, but if you didn’t pay on time, and you couldn’t always find buyers, the punishment was severe.

“What the fuck are you looking at?!” Oh shit, he’d noticed Babatu staring. He wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t move. He was instantly covered in sweat, and shaking so severely he didn’t know why he hadn’t fallen over yet. Kai’li was raising the gun, pointing it at Babatu. Time seemed to slow, and he just reacted, turning into the purest white flame he had ever been.

The bullet disintegrated before it got within ten feet. The crowd that had gathered gasped. Kai’li stared, wide-eyed, trying to comprehend.

Then Babatu knew. He knew what he was supposed to do. Whether it was an accident that he had been struck with such power or whether it was by some design, he knew how he must use it. All it took was one thought, one desire: that this man, and his men, would be gone. In the next moment, they were the next best thing. Dust.

I Love this Part

     Flight: superior (rank 2)

He shook his head, dislodging the memory. “Focus,” he mumbled. Time to use the other power he had honed in the past year and a half. Turning his palms parallel to the ground, he jumped off the roof, but he never touched the ground. It was nice having mini jet packs in your hands and feet.

He reached three hundred miles an hour in no time. At this rate it would only take a couple of minutes to reach these bastards and put an end to them once and for all. He couldn’t believe how fast he had gotten. At first he had barely been coordinated enough to get off the ground. Finding the right force to exert had taken a full week. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d taken a nosedive because of imbalanced jet streams. But he was flying fast and steady now.

Too Hot to Handle

     Fire: superior (rank 2)

• Ranged Attack
• Multi-Attack

As he approached the caravan (for such it was) he took stock of the situation. Seven vehicles, all in a row, with about five men in each were headed toward his village. Lots of fire power on ‘em too. Not for long. Babatu dove in and diverted his hand flames to long-range flamethrower capacity. The metal melted as fast as the rubber in the tires. It was over before they realized they had been set upon by a freak of nature; a very protective, pissed-off freak of nature.

He landed behind the last hummer and took a look at his work. This was getting too easy. No one had dared come within fifty miles of his village or the eight surround it thanks to this kind of work. He smiled, and that’s when he heard it.

Just in Case

     Energy Body: superior (rank 2)

A gun shot, loud and startling. He barely had time to react, to become indestructible flame. Luckily for him, the shooter was so burned he couldn’t hit an elephant at two feet. The bullet went wide, really wide. Well, why give him a second chance? He didn’t survive the flames this time.

“I really need to be more careful,” thought Babatu as he fired up his jets again.