The Metal Virus
When do they call you a monster?
Some use that word on the physically hideous, whether they’re equally monstrous in deed (like El Cucuy) or civic-minded and noble (like The People’s Collective). Others save it for those whose power makes them implacable, unstoppable and selfish, like Jarvis West or Tyler Ford. Still others would call those men monsters who have no power to tempt them, but who perform their murderous acts by the sweat of their own efforts.
But if you go by strict body count, and you permit death-by-proxy instead of insisting on the personal touch, the great monsters of the twentieth century are a select group. There’s Hitler, obviously. There’s Stalin. And there’s Rudy Phelps.
If you look at his history there is nothing to make you think him capable of arranging the deaths of many millions of people. He grew up in Nebraska. His parents stayed together. There was never any abuse or molestation. He got picked on in school, but no more than most and much less than some. He had girlfriends and heartbreaks and dead end jobs and he was making OK money as a repair technician for document copiers. When he got dark energy, he didn’t even know it. A woman made him forget he’d seen her, not realizing he wasn’t paying her any attention in the first place.
He found out when he was working on his car. He wasn’t thinking about anything in particular—daydreaming about horror movies and action films, his favorites, and then he felt the engine block shift under his hand. It was moving. It was dancing.
More than many others, Rudy intuited that he was forming a power, that it was happening, and it was dreamlike as he saw it all unfold. He’d thought about killing people all the time, of course, in a vague way. He’d thought about armageddon. But this would be his only opportunity to make it happen.
If he’d read some different comic books the night before, his power—and the world—might have been a very different place.
Lineage: Amanda Sykes - Amy Sykes - Jack Grimes - Leon Salvetti - Sophia Pendergrass - Ahn Peng - Zhou Wu - Carlotta Yorn
Power Level: Tier Nine
Offspring: Unknown
Personality: A dreamy, introverted sociopath. Shy, quiet, and you’d never guess that half-smile on his face comes from his fantasies of mass murder.
Values: Keeping His Promises, Destruction
Known Powers
- Rudy's most infamous and devastating power is Create Metal Virus Seed which he uses to spread killbots throughout the world during his travels.
- These seeds have the ability to Turn Iron or Steel Into Killbots. The resultant bots have Hyperbody, Hypercoordination, Hypermind, Heavy Armor, Extra Tough, Immunity to Human Weakness, Hypersense, and the ability to Reproduce.