Asteroid
- Maximus: Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.
- —David Franzoni, John Logan and William Nicholson, Gladiator (2000)
Asteroid is a spiritual homage to the Marvel character Hercules (who is himself modeled after the Greek myth about Herakles). Rather than going a mythological route with the character, I chose to go off-planet with an alien.
Personality
Ar-Then is a rather personable fellow, despite his odd appearance; between the mohawk, the eyes, and the fingers (and presumably toes), it would be rather hard to confuse him with a human being. Despite this, his zest for life and his inability to doubt himself allows him to be of good cheer at almost any circumstance. He also maintains a strong curiosity about this world which has fascinated the Malvans so, and tries to immerse himself in parts of its culture (although sometimes it isn't necessarily the popular culture at the time; for example, his latest musical obsession is with Barry Manilow).
He does have a somewhat excessive love for the fight, the contest between two fighters (or as is often the case, several versus him). He sees most of his opposition as lacking the "gift of combat" and is more than happy to share it.
It's worth noting that his fashion sense really needs help; the outfit he's wearing might look good on some of the other worlds in the universe, but on Earth...well, subtle isn't one of his stronger points.
Powers
Ar-Then is a super-strong, super-tough alien. There really isn't much else to say here. He hits hard, and he uses that strength to leap over tall buildings in a single bound (but don't confuse him with that other alien guy who does that). He can apparently breathe in space (or perhaps he doesn't need to breathe), and is unharmed by spending time in the vacuum-although it's possible that this is a short-term resistance rather than a total immunity.
As Asteroid fights, he has been known to add mass and density. This isn't due to any conscious act on his part-but as a fight progresses, he can put on up to an additional three feet of height, with accompanying increase in mass. This fluctuates wildly, and he can end up anywhere between his normal and his maximum height in those situations.
Weaknesses and Limitations
Ar-Then is overconfident to the extreme. Because he's durable and strong, he tends to occasionally be surprised when he is overwhelmed. Of course, defeats rarely last in his mind. As far as he sees it, nobody always wins; it just creates a new bar to be overcome. Victory is inevitable in his mind-all it requires is hard work and persistence.
A less exotic limitation is that Ar-Then is functionally illiterate on Earth; while he picks up spoken language quickly enough (he's already gotten the hang of many English expressions), the written forms elude him. He tends to view that sort of thing as a waste of time. He's had great success with using a tablet computer instead to speak directions to him to where he wants to go, though.
Equipment
Ar-Then probably owns a small space craft; its range is a matter of speculation.
He also has a lunar base he took from "some Doctor Whatsisface. He was going to launch bombers or something on the planet. It was a nice place, and there's no rent, so...!" A magnetic shield can be activated to let people roam free within the perimeter of the base, but alone, he'll leave it off.
Abilities
Ar-Then is a fighter. He's spent decades fighting, and expects to spend decades more. His species is supposedly very durable, and very long-lived-so barring mischance, he could live to see several hundred years.
That said, his chosen profession doesn't lend itself to longevity, even for a species as tough as his.
Character History
Ar-Then isn't from around here. Heck, he's not even from the same galaxy (that's how far out he is). Of course, he hasn't exactly gone into detail exactly where his home planet is; he calls it "Tem'lek'stath", but he's always smiling when he says that-could be he's just making up the name. He's obviously not human, though-with those eyes and the hands and the pointed ears and all. Says he's a Lothan, but since nobody's even heard of that species, he could just be making up that name, too.
To hear Ar-Then tell it, his people are boring. They're all about science and logic and how the universe fits together. Their concept of fun is solving a polynomial equation that explains the rotation of the galaxy. Ar-Then's concept of fun was a bit more elemental-he liked to hit things. As one could imagine, this sort of thing tended to make him looked down upon by his people. Fortunately, instead of doing something rash like locking him in a small room for the rest of his life, they suggested that he try to find a sense of purpose-somewhere else. He was given a small ship, and a set of charts that let him get to a nearby space station, and told him to find himself.
Arrival at the station was everything he'd dreamed of-which meant, "nothing like home"! Aliens of all kinds, and full of emotion, full of life! This was living, he believed-and decided that he'd never go home again. He got into some brawls, got into some love affairs, got drunk, you name it. He was living the life. Funny thing, too-because it turned out that his boring people had a history he'd never heard about-a legacy of being tough enough and strong enough to effectively tell the local star group to leave them all alone. Truth is, other species were glad to leave them alone-the last thing they wanted was to encourage Ar-Then's people to go out and start conquering them all to shut them up.
Ar-Then fell in with some of the more martial types, traveled the stars, and learned to fight. In the process, as he reached a new galaxy, he was told about something truly marvelous-a species called the Malvans who organized gladiatorial games for their amusement. This sounded great to Ar-Then. He chose a suitably impressive stage name: "Hey, don't mock the Asteroid! It hits your planet, it's all over for it!" His next step was to start building a reputation. One alien (some say it was a Gadroon carrying a grudge) suggested that he could fight under the noses of a recently opened arena, on a planet filled with truly remarkable beings.
A planet called "Earth".
That suited Ar-Then down to the ground. He arrived on the planet's moon, kicked out a nutty mad scientist and took his base before said scientist did something unwholesome to the world below, and did his due-diligence. It sounded like a place called Millennium City was the happening place-lots of bad people there with super-powers. They'd give him the fight he needed! So he quickly traveled to the planet and began kicking ass and taking names. This brought him to the attention of the MCPD, who brought him to the attention of PRIMUS and UNTIL; and after a meaningful conversation, convinced him to license up and work with the local authorities instead of just banging around banging heads.
Now that he's on Earth and meeting its people, Ar-Then's been charmed by the world and its culture-or more accurately, its diversity of cultures. He won't admit it to himself, not yet, but he's coming to view being a gladiator in Malva's arenas as less important than helping the people of this planet from being regressed back to the Stone Age by its more misanthropic members. The villains of the world had better watch out-the Asteroid's coming to land on them, and it won't be pretty!
Nemeses
Doctor Whatsisface
Real Name: Lukas Kreig
Powers/Abilities: Gadgeteering
Henchmen: Insectoids in power armor
Details: Dr. Lukas Kreig was an ordinary mad scientist out to conquer the world. Then Asteroid screwed up his plans. Now his goals are to kill Asteroid, THEN conquer the world!
Current Status: At Large
Trivia
Asteroid shares a name (kind of) with an older D&D character I made long ago. The name was neat enough and alien enough that I felt I could make use of it here.