The Ant
The Ant is a title given to a line of superheroes that started in the great energy X storm of 1923, when Richard Roy Rogers was exposed to the strange cosmic power of an ant-hill in the city of Exemplaria which itself was nestled in the Canadian Island of Nova Scotia, hat had been infused with energy X as the stellar storm blew through the solar system. The Etmologist was imbued with the collective powers of Antkind, gaining their proportionate speed, strength, agility, durability, and many of the most iconic powers of some of the most unique varieties of ants. Richard was a good man at heart, and decided to becoming part of the rise of costumed heroes by forging his own costumed identity and ant related gadgets. He decided to adopt the name of "The Ant", something plain and simple. Certainly it would be considered cheesy by modern day standards where the classical superhero is at an all time low, instead replaced largely by angsting anti-heroes, brooding demons, and an other assortment of beings who owe virtually nothing to the standard of superhero set by people like Doc Savage, Statesman, the Human Torch, and Superman.
Like many of the heroes that were arising in the twenties and thirties, Richard primarily fought street crime, struggling against the rising power of the Mafia as it spread like a plague over North America during the roaring twenties. While at first the public was wary of these new masked vigilantes, they soon grew to adore them as they proved to be the icons of what people thought was the best in humanity. The denizens of Exemplaria took to considering The Ant as sort of a mascot for the entire city after he repeatedly busted several major mob operations. But he was still one man struggling against the full force of the sicilian mafia. But others began to take to his example and began to fight the mob alongside him, spurred on by the discovery of their own powers and/or by the belief that they could make a difference in the world. Soon, an actual superteam began to form, the Nova Phalanx, one of the first classical examples of this now seemingly faded trope. For a time progress seemed to be good, and then the Depression hit.
While Canada was not as badly hurt by the crash of the stock market as America was, unemployment, poverty, and crime began to rise. The mob rebounded. By now, Richards was already approaching his forties, and while he was still easily superhuman, he was starting to fear for his wife and children. He still continued his superheroics, but the spectre of old age still kept on approaching. Eventually, with the Rise of Hitler came the rise of 5th column infiltrators to the west, bringing a new and deadly threat to the still nascent superhero community. A community that would be rocked when the Nazi villain known as Sturmhound tracked down and killed Richards in his own home in front of his then adolescent son Jeremy, eighteen years after Richards gained his powers. Jeremy, traumatized by the event, was unaware that the Energy X powers within Richards transferred into his son, starting the tradition of the power of the Ant transferring from father to son across the Rogers family line.
Jeremy was at first unaware of the transfer of power, but he rapidly began to discover that his body no longer the weak, frail thing it was, but something far more. He was now possessed of superhuman strength, durability, speed, agility, senses, and his bright mind set himself to the task of taking his father's legacy. He mastered the gadgets his father had built, and made his own version of the Ant-suit, he took his time to practice his new heroics on the home front, battling Nazi and Japanese infiltrators in Canada. Soon enough, Britain made a call to assemble a team of heroes to battle the Axis powers' own group, the Axis Uber Alles. This would lead to the formation of Freedom Force, which would be shipped off to war all across the globe.
Jeremy would soon find that fighting in a war was entirely different from battling crime and spies in one's hometown. You couldn't always count on the people not being hostile, the enemies were far more numerous and well equipped, they were not the kind to be intimidated easily. And generally speaking, even those heroes who could deal with bullets or armoured thugs found a tank to be well out of their league. Eventually, after several costly battles, the allies decided that superheroes were not a resource best utilized in standard military patterns, but something best put to work as commando style units that would lead assaults from behind enemy lines while the conventional troops carried the battles at the fronts.
Jeremy was one of the youngest members of freedom force, child heroes were almost universally expected to remain at home regardless of how powerful they were. As such, he brought a kind of youthful enthusiasm that many of the others found refreshing, even in the darkest days of the second world war when it seemed that the Axis powers were brushing aside the best efforts of the allies like flies. He watched many good team mates go down, but he remained sternly in the fight for the allies. He eventually saw the tides of war turn, and even participated in D-Day, during part of a desperate charge by Freedom Force to break open Omaha Beach as it seemed that Hitler's armies would roll the allies back into the sea.
A significant fraction of Freedom Force was lost at D-day in the ensuing clash, but Jeremy survived. He was horrified by the incident, watching so many brave soldiers go down like chaff before machine gun fire the moment their boat ramps lowered, mines ripping apart people. But still, he pushed on, guided by his own will to see the Nazi regime that killed his father crumble at last, to see the oppressed peoples of Europe Liberated. He would keep on fighting through France, and eventually was part of a team that helped the Soviets fight in Berlin, and then in China for operation August storm.
With the war finally over, Jeremy returned to the relative sanity of regular street fighting. He had spent nearly four years of his life fighting overseas against foreign enemies, and he was glad to finally return to more regular hero duties. Of course, the Axis menace wasn't entirely over, as remnant organizations of the three major axis powers still remained all over the world, but the days of panzers rolling through countries or zeroes clouding the skies was over. While Jeremy is probably the most famous and celebrated of the ants, he had a surprisingly mundane future after the war, settling down with his sweetheart and continuing the rogers line, though still engaging in many acts of heroism.
Roughly eighteen years after Jeremy became the Ant, he fought a strange cult whose emblem was a black hand in a triangle like symbol with an eye above it. The cult was dangerously organized and had technology like nothing he had ever seen before, more dangerous than even the Axis powers or Soviet and Chinese aligned infiltrators and the mobs and supervillains of the underworld. He wasn't daunted though, and on November Sixteenth of the year 1959 fought a large group of the cult that was threatening to storm the city hall of Exemplaria. He and many other heroes beat down what had to be thousands of cultists, but when a Redeemer war mech presented itself, the Nova Phalanx was outmatched.
Deciding that he was the best suited for the task, Jeremy told the rest of his team mates to send his regards to his wife and children, and informed them that it was an honour serving with them. He then moved in on the godzilla like walker, weaving through an incredible barrage of firepower to ascend it's mammoth frame, reaching an access hatch which he had dissolved open with several acid grenades before fighting his way to the reactor core. The interior of the mech was cramped, had little room for dodging and acrobatics, and he was mortally wounded by the time he reached the reactor. Finding that the reactor was incredibly radioactive, he decided against blowing it up, but noted that a large enough foreign mass could destabilize it.
As he was dying anyway, Jeremy leapt into the Dark Glass Reactor, his body melting into the liquid Dark Glass and inducing instability in the delicate process. The reactor core imploded upon itself, and the massive warmech shut itself down before exploding once the dark glass reactor core had become inert in a brilliant, but non-radioactive detonation. For his actions, Jeremy was posthumously awarded the victoria cross for the third time, and a statue was erected in his honour, commemorating his selfless sacrifice to try and save the city. His death was even more widely mourned than that of his father, with even Queen Elizabeth II herself attending.
But once again, the power of the ant changed hosts, moving into Jeremy's youngest son, the sixteen year old Kyle. Like his father before him, and his grandfather before that, Kyle took up the legacy of The Ant upon discovering his powers, taking on his costume and learning the gadgets of his predecessors, while still holding to their strict moral code. Kyle became a prominent teenage hero in the sixties, being part of the illustrious "Silver age of heroism". Though he never quite moved out of Jeremy's shadow, he was a formadible hero in his own right. He reminded the people of Exemplaria that no matter what happened, an Ant would always be there to protect them.
Eventually, in eighteen years, not long before the next energy X storm, which seemed to follow a similar eighteen year cycle, Kyle would pass down the mantle after taking on Sturmhound to allow American hero Tombstone to stop a nuclear meltdown. Sturmhound outclassed Kyle severely, but he didn't stop fighting, and even after the Nazi beat the man to the edge of death, he still cracked one last joke at sturmhound's expense and detonated all of his grenades, blasting Sturmhound so fiercely that he was weakened enough for Tombstone to curbstomp him in their rematch. But like Jeremy, Kyle had his own children who continued the legacy, Stanley assuming the title of the Ant and keeping on the legacy in the year of 1977.
From Stanley, the mantle passed onto Nathan when he died in the year of 1995 after a confrontation with the villain O'chunks. Nathan was the first ant of the "Modern era" so to speak, and even as the world was frenzily altering itself in the wake of the cold war, he did his best to stay abreast of it all. He was in a rapidly changing world, the superhero community just starting to emerge from the "Dark age" where the heroes were quite often scarcely any better than the villains they fought. But even in this strange new world, Nathan managed to keep the ant relevant to Canada and the World. Eventually the new millenium dawned, and with it a breath of fresh air as a newfound Optimism filled the world.
The two thousands were a decade of transition, the world slowly shaking off the traits of the 20th century as it rolled into the third millenium. Technology for the common man continued to advance at an astonishing rate, and a new surge of superheroes and villains began to fill the world. Some evoked the Optimism of the golden, silvered, and bronzed ages, others were much closer to the Dark Age. But The Ant remained a name that echoed throughout the community, a timeless hero that doesn't seem to have changed the core values of the mantle since the roaring twenties all those years ago. Eventually though, preparing to make an appearance at the 2012 olympic games, Nathan simply disappeared in a flash of light.
The ant-force it seemed, duplicated rather than transferring, and Nathan's Thirteen year old son, Charles, would become the new ant. Charles took to the new mantle surprisingly well, the knowledge of how to operate the ant's gadgets transferring into him along with the powers. And before school was even back in for the next year, he was already out on the streets as the new ant. He considers being a superhero to be quite frankly the most awesome thing ever, still a bit too young to be plagued by many of the problems that afflict adult superheroes. He doesn't exactly limit himself to action in Exemplaria either, and often engages in his heroics in the states and europe whenever he has an excuse to be there.
But Charles is still quite new to the business of being a superhero, and only time will tell how he takes to it.
Powers
Super strength: Charles has the proportionate strength of an Ant, being capable of lifting fifteen tons at maximum, though during adrenaline surges he can lift much more, just like how an average person can lift trees or small cars under extreme duress.
Durability: Charles' skin can become tough and hard like the exoskeleton of an ant, allowing it to resist small caliber rounds such as 9mms and 5.56mm bullets, laugh off the punches of most of those without super strength, and be incredibly hard to cut without a special knife, an Ak-47 will still go through him though, just not quite as well as it would a normal person. That being said, bullets still hurt like a bitch. Also, given the odd structure of his body, it is very difficult to inflict internal injuries by attacking his outer body. He's also highly resistant to poison and outright immune to acid and can tolerate the extremes of temperature and ionizing radiation much better than a normal human.
Speed and agility: Charles is capable of running at over two hundred and fifty miles per hour and leaping a hundred and fifty feet, while having reaction times seventy times better than that of a peak human, making dodging bullets pretty much effortless for him. He is also capable of burrowing through pretty much any substance at about half his running speed, even through solid concrete, through a strange, limited form of geokinesis.
Ant Commander: Ants of all kinds obey Charles' every whim, 'nuff said.
Wall crawling: Like the ants his powers are based off of, Charles is capable of sticking to and crawling on most surfaces to an incredible degree. Even if one is incredibly strong, the surface Charles is sticking too will always give out before he does if one tried to pull him off. Only through conscious will or being knocked out can he be separated.
Danger sense: Charles has a potent danger sense that is enhanced in potency by the antennae on his costume, which also allows him to feel vibrations in the air and tremors in the ground much better than normal people. His other senses are also better by a fair deal than a peak human, though his senses of smell and hearing are the most highly improved.
Healing factor: Injuries that take regular people months to recover can be regenerated from in a day by Charles, while bruises, scrapes, and cuts can be gone in minutes.
Trapjaw power: Probably Charles' least favourite power to use, this ability lets him summon up huge surges of kinetic energy to hit like a trapjaw ant, increasing his hitting power by tenfold, with this he can jump incredible distances or flatten far stronger enemies. But there is a problem, the recoil of this power is tremendous, he can be knocked back a very long ways after hitting something, he has little control over himself when going through the air at such speeds, and it's overall quite a nauseating experience. He can however, use this power to survive falls that should be fatal to someone of his durability level, using the kinetic force to cancel out that of the fall like a super powered trampoline.
Bullet ant power: Charles is capable of adding a special enzyme to his attacks that causes his blows to hurt far more than they should, causing incredible amounts of pain that easily exceed the sensations of being set on fire, shot, electrocuted, or giving child birth. This is quite handy for putting down opponents nonlethally. For example, giving child birth is worth 60 dels of pain, while being hit in the reproductive organs (male or female) is 9000 dels. A bullet ant punch from Charles can go well over a million dels.
Fire ant powers: Charles can create powerful acids through his sweat glands, allowing him to dissolve most materials as well as allowing him to fill his acid grenades without needing access to a chemical factory. His suit is specially designed to be immune to acid while still allowing it through. He can also secrete an array of poisons that can go from acting like tear or knockout gas to being fatal, though obviously he prefers not to use the latter, he can also make flammables though the danger inherent in them is obvious, and he can also create curatives, letting him be a walking medicine factory or aphrodisiacs for when he wants to try his luck.
Equipment
Ant suit: The Ant Suit is something of a marvel costume wise. It's made out of special, very strong fibres that further enhance Charles' durability, letting him take Assault rifle rounds, though machine guns will still put him at serious risk if he tries to tank them, it comes with a great deal of shock absorption systems to further minimize injury, making him highly resistant to blunt force, and is quite difficult to cut.
Goggles-Antennae: Working as a sensor and communication suite, these allow him to access night, thermal, x-ray, and echolocation goggle settings to help him deal with invisible foes, and the Antennae allow him access to a broad array of telecommunications like the internet, radios, television, cell phones, and so on, it also allows him to browse the internet on his goggles, which he often does while slacking off. The antennae also helps tune his danger sense more to allow him to better detect incoming enemies.
Charles in his civilian outfit.Grenades: Perhaps the most defining aspect of the Ants have been their grenades. While acid grenades are the most common, gas grenades, concussive grenades, glue grenades, fragmentation grenades, incindiery grenades, and shaped charged explosives have all been used by an Ant at some point in time. Charles carries a large number of collapsible grenades, which he can flatten into a small disc for better storage. The grenades also have more efficient processes than standard military grenades, allowing him to make them smaller.
Mandibles: Mounted on his wrists and ankles, these ultra sharp, retractable titanium-promethium-vibranium blades are primarily used to cut open heavy armour that's resistant to shaped charges and acid. Given the Ant's strict no-killing policy which has an incredibly narrow list of situations where an exception can be made, they are almost never used on people. These blades have been part of the Ant's equipment roster since Richard himself, and Charles is excessively careful with them.
Grappling lines: These small devices on his wrist fire out long, thin cables with special nanotech grappling hooks attatched, allowing Charles to swing around buildings and tie up enemies in these incredibly strong carbon nanotube like cables, they cannot form structures as complex as the webbing used by many other arthropod themed heroes though.
Flight pack: A turbofan flight pack that allows the ant to fly at about mach three with stunning maneuverability, Charles isn't quite used to using this though, so he often foregoes it's use. The flight pack uses nuclear fusion energy and thus has more or less unlimited flight time.
Tracers: Tiny microchips that can stick on to anything tuned to the Ant's danger sense, these allow Charles to track a foe no matter where they go or how far they try to bring themselves away from him. These are an invaluable asset in helping him hunt down fleeing foes.
Rebreather: Built into his mask, these protect charles from gaseous poisons and allow him to function under water or in low oxygen environments just fine. They're always on and do not need to be activated.
Abilities
Fighting skill: While not having much formal training outside of some mixed martial arts classes he attended throughout middle school, he has a style all of his own, making use of the fact that with his power set, fighting like a regular person would is kind of dumb. Given that it's highly informal, those who are trained to counter specific fighting styles have a hard time with him.
Wise cracking: A trademark ability of the Ant since the 20s, Charles uses his wit to try and frustrate and annoy his enemy with a series of taunts of varying quality to put them off balance.
Intelligence: The Rogers have been a bright minded family for a very long time, and Charles is no exception, he's smart enough to build and maintain all of his own equipment, and is considered a very good student in high school.
Mechanical ability: Charles is naturally quite skilled with machines, and has taken further classes on how to design, build, and maintain gadgets from Inertron, famed power suit and genius of Exemplaria. Thus, he can build and invent all sorts of useful and nifty things given the time and resources. He's even built his own suit of power armor to let him trade blows with an enraged O'chunks and a device that drains cosmic energy that let him overcome a former herald of Galactus amongst other things.
Traits
Height: 5'6
Mass: 120 lbs
Eye colour: Blueish green.
Hair colour: Black
Nationality: Canadian
Skintone: Caucasian
Real name: Charles Samuel Rogers
Identity: Secret to the public, known to select few friends.
Hometown: Exemplaria, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Alignment: Neutral Good
Affiliation: Nova Phalanx, considered a mascot of Canada.
Ethnicity: Anglo-Saxon.
Species: Homo Sapiens Formica
Age: 15
Date of birth: August third, 1998
Religion: Neo-Pagan (Asatru/Aesir worshipper)
Sexuality: Heterosexual.
Personality
Charles is goofy, optimistic, and soemwhat naive. He's definitely a product of his family line, and believes strongly in the classical sort of true blue heroism. He also is definitely a fun lover, enjoying the hell out of what he does because it's both incredibly awesome and it always leaves him with a good feeling. He tries to not kill his enemies unless there's absolutely no other choice, but he does have limits on how much crap he'll tolerate from a villain.
That being said, when faced with the choice between fighting the bad guy and saving the people, he'll always go for the latter if there's no way to do both at the same time. He likes to analyze things, including his enemies, but often in the heat of battle he can forget to do this. Ultimately, he's something of an embodiement of that diehard Canadian spirit, never backs down, stands for what's right, and willing to give everything, up to and including his own life, to protect people. His ancestors before him would do no less.
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