"Deliverance came from far away, A silent avenger paying the bet, one by one with flying lead."
Theme1: Iron savior - Faster than all
Theme2: Disturbed - Indestructible
Theme2: Disturbed - Indestructible
Name:
Devon Arnulf Metzger - A concession between his mother and his father, where the name carrier of every fourth generation in his fathers was historically named Arnulf. His father also always addressed him as Arnulf instead of as Devon.
Alias:
Freischütz - Legends speak of a marksman who made a deal with the devil for 6 bullets that never miss their mark, with a seventh being as the disposal of the devil. The situation might be a bit different, but the name is still very appropriate and a promise to those he takes aim at.
Age:
21
Gender:
Male
Sexuality:
Heterosexual
Nationality:
American, but with a German father
Affiliation:
HLA
Faceclaim:
Kotarou Tennouji From Rewrite
Height:
182cm or 6feet
Weight:
83kg or 183 pounds
Hair:
Devon's hair is blond with caramel brown, and very prone to turning into a full summer blond if he spends a couple hours per day under the Texas summer sun, but due to the small amount of time he spends outside without his costume his hair color turned more to the caramel brown end of the spectrum than the blond he sported before donning his costume.
Eyes:
His eyes have often time been described by others as being almost exactly like three different pieces of amber mixed with one another. Bright and shiny amber on the surface with clouded amber hiding behind, all rimmed by a ring of darker more brown variant of clear amber.
Scars:
There are a couple of scars from grazing shots he received during his trigger event on and around his right shoulder. While they aren't very pronounced and can easily be hidden under a t-shirt, those marks from his past are still there.
personality
Devon is the kind of guy who can easily blend in any social situation, but without good reason he won't draw too much attention to him, being in the conversation and outside of the spotlight is the place where he feels most comfortable. Though he never really worried about fitting in anywhere, causing him to generally have very loose and temporary connections with people he doesn't see almost weekly. Of course that is unless said connection were to be with someone who he deems as particularly interesting, which could be women he feels attracted to or people with an unique outlook on life for example.
He is friendly and helpful to generally anyone, especially if they look like they could use a helping hand or even just a friendly face to talk to or just vent to, knowing that sometimes just that little bit of effort can lift the spirits of someone having a bad day. Not that he'd voluntarily step into some kind of situation involving some kind of villain situation, as he'd rather keep his professional and private life separate much like his identity. A non-villain related crime however, especially when it's bullying he'll feel much more inclined to step in as he feels like he'd actually be able to do something there other than risking his life.
Devon has a strong moral kompas, but he isn't as misguided as some others as to outright condemn petty crime without looking at the circumstances, nor is he able to look at the upper echelons of the corporate with anything other than contempt knowing they are far more evil than those who'd steal food to survive.
As far as Devons professional behavior while that kindness doesn't fade when he dons his mask it gets coated in a layer of somewhat aggressive cynicism and unlike most other heroes who's focus is on protecting the innocent he has a strong focus towards capturing the perpetrators and passing judgement on them. He tends to be more conservative preferring to outsmart or otherwise try to gain an upper edge over the more common just rush in as fast as possible methods often seen in heroes with stronger powers.
Power classification:
Shaker 5 / Breaker 1 / Blaster 9 / Thinker 5 / Striker 4
Shaker: Devon has been given this classification due to the large variety of ordinance he can project that can drastically change the battlefield to a devastating mix of fire, ice, craters, corrosive materials and other unpleasantries.
Breaker: He was given this designation by the simple virtue that his powers changed the costume he wears from a few thrown together clothing items into a full suit of combat ready armor far exceeding the standards of conventional armor.
Blaster: Running under the Damage, ruin, barrage, range, accuracy, effect, impact and versatile. Depending on the weapon he holds in his hands he can shift from someone capable of hitting a penny from a rooftop halfway across the city to someone who can saturate the air with hot lead without ever needing a reload all while retaining the accuracy of the famed and feared marksmen of history.
Thinker: Having the power to master an item by simply making contact with it squarely put him into the scan and skill sub-classes. The fact that he merely needs to hold a rifle to instantly master it's use and in effect copy the most famed and feared marksmen of all times is one half of a equation why his blaster designation has been set so high.
Striker: The other part of the equation is his ability to over time have his prized equipment become attuned empowering them with things like the ability to pump out lead without ever requiring to reload, have all bullets fired by the gun have homing properties, throwing out bullets capable of setting the air ablaze or perhaps have them burst in a cloud of cryogenic fluid.
Powers:
Ace of all trades:
Whenever Devon touches an item and applies his power to said item he gains a temporary mastery of the items use or a mastery of the items intellectual contents. If said item were to be a something like a tablet which has both skills attached to it and contains knowledge both are transferred without any further input. However he is able to specifically pull out certain skills or pull out just the information if he so desires, allowing him to scan a tablet for information without pulling out the artistic skills he'd be able to attain from it. In the beginning his power was less controlled leading to spontaneous skill transfers without rime or reason from the most mundane household items.
Transfer: Tough the exact process is still largely unknown the fact remains that as soon as Devon touches an item and applies his power to said item he gains what appears to be a culmination of all knowledge to the use of said item both in it's conventional use and some unconventional uses, however it's usually narrowed down to the skills he desires to gain with it. Meaning that if he grabs a common household item as an impromptu weapon, he'll only learn the items use as a weapon. What's more remarkable tough is the fact that along with that knowledge he also gains the muscle memory associated to the skills allowing him to use the skills to their full potential from the very start.
Retention: Through repeated or prolonged use of his powers to use certain skills over time more and more of the transferred knowledge and muscle memory will be retained to the point that he has nothing more to gain from a regular transfer.
Attunement: Shrouded in even more unknowns is this particular ability, the only explanation that seems to make sense was that the transfer is actually a 2 way transfer of skills and that items he transferred skills from would have the ability of growth transferred to them. Which caused the items he used repeatedly for extensive amounts of time to develop into the things one would normally expect to see from a tinker classified cape. It would also seem that a strong emotional connection to the item can cause acceleration of this development and that Devon has control over the development of the items subconsciously as the growth is in a predictable and desired fashion. Attunment also comes with it's own limitation and at the same time serves as the reason why he was classified as a striker and not as a one of the tinker classifications. The items affected by attunement regardless of what they are share one property without a supply of power from Devon they lose their supernatural powers.
Overdrive: As the name might suggest this ability allows him to draw out skills far beyond normal human capability from an item, allowing him to far beyond what his muscles, senses and mind could normally withstand without causing any repercussions from it's use. It however has a rather tight constriction in the fact that it requires it to be a skill derived from an attuned item with approximately 2 years of regular use and a fairly high retained or natural mastery of the skill.
Scan: Devon is capable of scanning, deciphering, translating and processing the knowledge stored in any type of data carrier. From a scribbled note to a harddrive, as long as it's stored on or in something physical it can be scanned by him through his touch. However this has a much lower speed than the instantaneous that skills experience with for example it taking 4 hours to fully process the knowledge in the encyclopedia Britannica. The gained knowledge is also very temporal in nature as most of it will just disappear the moment he let's go of the item he scanned, requiring repeated scans to fully retain the knowledge.
Limitations: Some skills are partially transferable, this is due to the nature of some skills. Take cooking for example, while he may have great skills with his cooking equipment Devon will still need recipes to actually cook good food, no amount of touching a saucepan will teach him how to actually make the sauce he wishes to make. The same is true for most skills which require secondary knowledge or experience, where the actual ability to perform something properly isn't directly tied to how well you handle the tools of the trade. Then there's the limitation on how many items he can use his powers on at the same time, in his current state he is able to only maintain a connection with 3 items at the same time without causing significant mental strain in the form of headaches, loss of concentration, dizziness and disorientation.
Equipment
Armor:
Freischütz' signature set of clothes. A black helmet attached to which is an armored mask covering his entire face with deep red glasses covering his eyes. A black long sleeved armored vest covered by a brown trenchcoat, a pair of black jeans hiding another layer of armor below, brown steel toed boots and a pair of black gloves with an armor plate strapped to the back. The helmet has been equipped with with radio equipment, an air purification system and infra red, night vision capabilities built into the glasses. Then comes the attunement bonuses, the entire armor is heavily thermally insulated and fire repellent, making it comfortable to wear in any situation ranging from the arctics to a burning building. It's defensive value has also seen quite a few upgrades to cushion the forces impacted on the user inside the suit, seeing as the suit itself can handle being fired at by armor piercing tank shells without a scratch. It's also been noted that the armor seems to impart a slight increase in speed, dexterity and strength to it's user, but given that it won't help even the odds against even the weaker of the physically gifted parahumans it's seen as insignificant.
The armory:
Devon own three guns as of present. The smallest of which is a long barreled 6 shot Smith & Wesson model 686 with the words "in memoriam" engraved on the side of the barrel. This is also the weapon that Devon has worked with for the longest amount of time out of the three, making it substantially more powerful than the other two in terms of it's homing properties and the amount of firepower/effects delivered compared to the caliber of the weapon.
The second weapon is a Scar-L assault rifle with an underslung grenade launcher and a reflex sight, While the grenade launcher was a later addition once he became a full fledged HLA member he used this weapon regularly while in the THA. This is also the most flexible and most commonly used weapon in his arsenal, while he would never go on patrol without his trusty sidearm, the accuracy, firing speed and general flexibility to be effective in any combat situation combined with it's additional arsenal of effect grenades that it can launch make the assault rifle his weapon of choice.
The last weapon is one that was given to him as a gift for becoming a full HLA member, an accuracy international .338 lapua AWM. This latest addition to his arsenal is generally not taken on missions or patrols unless he is to be on standby and provide fire support where needed or the mission demands the use of heavy firepower, however out of all three guns this one outputs the most destructive firepower and can project it over the furthest range, it's also the rifle that cemented his hero name as Freischütz.
All three weapons apply homing to their projectiles to some degree, have a variety of munitions to fire from non-lethal ammo like rubber pellets, sandbag ammo(high impact bullets with little to no penetrating force) and stun ammo to more destructive munitions like cryogenic, explosive and even armor piercing bullets. A final commonality between the weapons is their lack of ammunition requirements for firing the weapon.
History
The early years
While Devon's mother was from Arizona his father came all the way from North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, came to the US when he was only 14. While Devon never really had any particular interest in the culture from his fathers side there never really was a shortage of it either due to the large family his father had been born into. In school he pretty much blended right in, while he did have a bit of a German accent which some of the kids thought was hilarious, but he shrugged it off seeing that the others had their own traits that could be made fun of. Not that the accent was a source of hilarity for long as he polished it away in a couple of years and his classmates slowly got more interested in learning German curse words which they thought would allow them to curse without getting caught, never worked though.
Just before he was to go to middle school they moved to a small town near Capetown after his dad's job had him moved to the local HQ as part of his promotion. For Devon the move was a bit rough, they moved away from his friends and the family he'd always been close with and given that he was dropped into a school consisting of people who had been together from the first years in elementary school, he couldn't find a place to fit in right away. Until he hit his freshman year he'd spend his life in school more in an outcast sort of fashion than he was used to, combined with the lack of family within walking distance he developed a gaming hobby to keep him occupied outside of school.
During his freshman year he broke all the social rules of a high school society he was always good at sports, had decent looks and was pretty well off causing him to get pulled in by the popular kids of the school, but at the same time he felt more at home hanging with the misfits and the nerdy/geeky kids from his year, especially since they generally shared more interests. Some of the teachers saw this as a refreshing change seeing someone mingles with both the popular kids and the outcasts, but mostly he was just seen as an oddity, but accepted for the most part.
Trigger event
During his sophomore year his family had a reunion at his uncles' house, they had just had dinner and Devon had gone to grab the extra controller he'd brought when he heard the sound of glass shattering from down below followed by screaming and gunfire. In a state of utter panic and disbelieve he stands there frozen with the controller in one hand and the doorknob in the other as he can hear how his family is being killed one by one in the rooms below. Then the gunfire ended, and he heard yelling from 3 voices he'd never heard before. With his heart throbbing in his throat he stood there listening to what was happening down below, trying to figure out how he was going to get out of this alive. Jumping out the window wasn't an option he'd want to take he knew there was a lot of garden furniture below that window to break his leg on landing, but going through the house didn't sound like a much better option either.
He then heard a set of footsteps walk up the stairs and realized his time was running out. Down below he could hear the sound of the other two looting the place in an utmost violent fashion, yanking drawers out of their rails, breaking the doors off the cabinets as they threw them open, throwing everything they didn't deem as valuable on the ground in their rush to find anything of value. With those two occupied with ransacking he felt like he had a chance to jump the one checking the upstairs rooms. Devon waited until he could hear the footstep right on the other end of the door and in one motion pushed the door open in the man's face and tackled him to the ground. It wasn't a fierce struggle and before the man could even regain his bearing Devon had taken the gun from the man's hands.
In that very moment where he wrested the gun from the crooks hands and aimed it at the man something inside snapped, everything after that turned into a dazed frenzy. He killed the man he was standing over 2 shots, both right through the brain, then ran to the end of the hallway peering down at the bottom floor aiming the gun at the door which was between him and the two others in the house. The two couldn't not have noticed what had happened upstairs and the lack of furniture being wrecked was a clear sign of it. He sneaked down the stairs as quietly as he keeping his aim on the door, expecting someone to come storming through any second. He was on the second to last step down when the door finally swung open and a guy bearing an assault rifle came rushing through, Devon managed to shoot him, but was hit by a few grazing shots in return and expended the entire remainder of his clip in doing so. Ignoring the pain in his adrenaline fueled frenzy he rushed to the weapon and grabbed it from the man's dying hands, just in time to take down the crook that was trying to ambush Devon from around a corner.
Using the last bits of adrenaline in his system he used the house phone to call 911. He then looked around the house to try and find anyone who was still alive, but he was the only one left alive in the house. He walked to one of the rooms where there were no bodies and sat down with the rifle on his lap. He wanted to break out in tears, he wanted to scream in rage, wanted to curl up in a ball and wait for the nightmare to be over, but none of that came. He just sat there with an empty stare looking at an unlit fireplace until the emergency services arrived. The last thing he remembered was hearing knocking on the door and a feeling splitting headache as he got up to open the door, from there his memory was all black, apparently he fainted while the police officers were questioning him.
Aftermath
In the end Devon got off without any criminal charges being filed against him. Doesn't mean he got of without any form of punishment, the forensics on the three assailants seemed off for someone who isn't used to handling firearms and the interrogations only added more question marks, in the end the PCRT were brought in on the case and they quickly determined that Devon was a parahuman and enrolled him into the THA given he had no direct family he could move to and they wanted to keep an eye on him. During the years he practiced his skill using the revolver he inherited from his deceased grandfather, learning that there was more to his power than was originally estimated. As such his classification has been changed quite a few times over the years, taking into account the new that his ever changing equipment brings.
Current life
After reaching the age of 18 Devon was moved to the capetown regional HLA team. Though he does frequently perform patrols through the city his shifts often including being on standby on specific rooftops, especially when PCRT has an inkling of something going down somewhere soon, to give the capes on the ground the reassurance that fire support at worst is just one radio call away(if he isn't already watching their backs). He has no particular plans for the future other than paying off the mortgage on his condo, maybe find a girlfriend preferably one that he doesn't need to hide his other side from, and like any other hero there is always that lingering aspiration to climb at least to the top tier heroes.
