<div class="floatright">(http://orig10.deviantart.net/3f32/f/2012/002/5/6/dust_and_smoke_by_shimmering_sword-d4l4dg7.jpg)</div>Name: Darclight<br/>Where: ? ? ? -> Moonstone Gallery<br/>Milestones: Riders on the Storm and ?<br/>1 PP | 0 Physical | 0 Mental | 0 Emotional<br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Mechanics</div><div class="spoiler_body"></div></div><hr/><br/><em>"-hung off the side of a plane!"<br/><br/>"Nobody cares, Hank."<br/><br/>"We could have done that-"<br/><br/>"Dad..."<br/><br/>"-but with <strong>ants.</strong>"</em><br/><br/>"Shut if off, Khaj."<br/><br/><span class="bbc_u">"Sir?  Are you certain?  I mean-"</span><br/><br/>"There's only so many times it can be funny.  Shut it off."<br/><br/><span class="bbc_u">"Yes, sir."</span><br/><br/>Somewhere, out of sight and yet not out of the city known as Simport, was the former hero known as Darclight.  Former because six months ago, all of the villains he had based his career on were, quite simply, gone.  Not gone gone - quite a number of them were locked up in various global supermax prisons, or otherwise incapacitated - but the effect was the same.  No supervillains, which meant that superheroes had a few choices.  One: make a living fighting mundane, everyday crime - a former teammate of his from Stormwatch was trying to do just that.  Darclight couldn't do that because, quite simply, when you had<em>superpowers</em>, fighting a bunch of drug lords and their private armies tended to be over very quickly.<br/><br/>The second choice - taken by two MORE of his teammates - was to leave Earth and head off elsewhere.  Darclight couldn't do that, either.  Khaji Da - the intelligence aboard the armor - was convinced that eventually the Deathmarks would find their stolen scoutship, and it would be then that humanity would need their help.  Scratch that option.  Which left the third, taken by one last Stormwatch team-fellow: retirement.<br/><br/>For some, retirement was a blessing, a chance to go out and live life and (in the case of one Sorcerer Medical) make something of oneself.  That was hardly the case for the man and the armor that together made Darclight.<br/><br/>To fill in, reader.  Darclight is, to paraphrase Cyrano de Bergerac, two making together one hero of romance!  (Minus the romance part.  Because reasons.)<br/><br/>The face, the armor, was Khaji Da - to its knowledge, the last of a line of armors made by its creators to fight the Deathmarks - omnicidal automatons bent on destroying all life.  The armies of the Deathmarks had finally fallen, to the last, when it had fought this particular race.  Or so it had been believed.  On a planet, far away from Earth, Khaj (as the other half came to call him) had discovered the existence of a final army of Deathmarks, led by the last of its charismatic heads, Varkolak (who had declared himself 'Lord of the Deathmarks' after discovering he alone remained of leadership).<br/><br/>In a daring feat, Khaji - operating the armor remotely, as it could - stole a Deathmark scoutship, in a hurry to return to its creators and warn them of the threat.  In that same feat, however, the means by which Khaji could manipulate the suit was damaged, leaving the scoutship to travel on a straight, singular course.  A course which led it to crash on the planet Earth, into the house of the armor's operator.<br/><br/>Richard Conway.  Up until a few years ago, one of the most promising graduate students at the nearby Simport Technical University's Chemistry program.  Conway, as he preferred to be known (though 'Rick' could be gotten away with by friends), was not just on the fast-track to becoming the latest graduate of STU's more notoriously difficult programs.  He was on the<em>lightspeed</em>track.  It's been noted in history that some people were just<em>clearly</em>meant to be something - Dickens and Faulkner were meant for literature; Adam Smith was meant for economics...and Richard Conway was<em>meant</em>to be in the chemistry lab.  He was a genius.  He was going to do amazing things.<br/><br/>Up until his tiny, graduate-funded house was destroyed by an alien ship crashing into it.  (The man himself had managed to survive because of a case of 'My brain needs Taco Bell' that had sent him on a food run.)  Conway found the armor, which explained its presence in his house, and then the two had to - in the span of just a few minutes - make a rather fateful decision.<br/><br/>The armor could not allow itself to be captured, because then it might be dismantled and be of no use when the Deathmarks came.  Conway could not stay here any longer (aside from the fact that there was not much of a house left now) because he would almost certainly become a...government asset, and not in the way he had envisioned it.  Conway needed to hide; Khaji needed a pilot.  And THUS, Darclight was made, out of sheer necessity.<br/><br/>As expected, the authorities showed up and towed away the scoutship, and made efforts to find Richard Conway.  They failed, and Conway was, to this day, still listed as a 'Person of Interest - Missing' in government files.<br/><br/>"What are we doing here, Khaj?  It seemed like just yesterday Red Team was talking, training, waiting for the next Red Alert to sound at HQ..."<br/><br/><span class="bbc_u">"I know this is difficult for you, sir, but the fact remains that the villains are gone."</span><br/><br/>"<em>Were</em>gone.  Until that gigantic light-shooting thing blew up a bunch of the supermax prisons and got the villains out.  None of them ever made it this far, though..."<br/><br/><span class="bbc_u">"Sir?  I'm picking up some sort of police transmission..."</span><br/><br/>"I'm not interested in busting up a bank robbery, Khaj."<br/><br/><span class="bbc_u">"Not even one done by the Silver Spider?"</span><br/><br/>Pause.  "Well, beats sitting here being bored.  Alright, Khaj, let's go!"<br/><br/>And so it was that Darclight, soldier of space, appeared in front of the Moonstone Gallery.<br/><br/>Namely by landing feet-first (after a spectacularly impressive jet-assisted jump) onto a nearby cop car.  It had taken a few minutes to traverse the distance, but in that time, Conway had put on his game face...voice.  Yeah.<br/><tt class="bbc_tt"><br/>"Sorry."</tt>He stated as he stepped off the partially crushed car.<tt class="bbc_tt">"Well, the Silver Spider...guess we shouldn't keep our host waiting, yes?"</tt>