Genre: Superhero / Dramatic Comedy Species: Mutant Humans Alignments: Various Good
Members: Shard, Martyr, Vetala, and Kineticist
Group Backstory: In every piece of Superhero media, there exists an A-Team of incredibly strong heroes, all possessing amazing superpowers or godlike abilities. This includes the Justice League, the Avengers, e.t.c…
There are also usually a few B-Teams, teams with powerful heroes that have useful abilities but lack the ability to fight extinction-level threats. B-Teams would be the X-Men, the Defenders, the Teen Titans, so on and so forth, and they specialize in threats to entire cities and (rarely) entire states.
However, there’s another side of superhero societies that rarely gets the spotlight. These are the C-Teams. For every hero that’s born with Superman’s infinite power, there are a hundred other people born with an ability that’s worth next to nothing without proper training. Should they choose to become heroes, those less-fortunate mutants must join a C-Team, each sponsored by a member of a superhero A-Team. This is the 24th such team to exist.
Each C-Team hero fills a role in the party. They each have a distinct power with a distinct drawback, and all of them have been given gadgets to help diminish the detrimental effects of their drawbacks.
Martyr (Assigned Leader)
Name/Role: Jeremiah Peck is ‘Martyr’, the veteran member of C-Team #24 and the person that the A-Team assigned to be #24’s team leader. Despite this, he mostly just does what the group recommends, preferring to take the roles of ‘The Big Guy’ and ‘The Heart’.
Power: Martyr is able to create barriers in a wide range, each capable of stopping bullets and quite impenetrable.
Drawback: He feels all the pain of each attack that he blocks, regardless of distance. This means that he’s incredible in hand-to-hand combat, but if he has to block bullets he’s going to faint from shock.
Countermeasure: Martyr has adrenaline shots built into his suit that he can activate at a moment’s notice, enabling him to stay in the fight for longer.
Vetala (Actual Leader)
Name/Role: Aditi Laghara is ‘Vetala’, the actual ‘Leader’ and strategist of C-Team #24. She mostly avoids combat, preferring to handle the administrative sides of superheroing — the C-Team doesn’t get the same pass that the A and B Teams do, and have far more bureaucracy to deal with.
Power: Vetala has wings and incredibly precise eyesight.
Drawback: Vetala can only fly because her bones are hollow like a bird’s, and her eyesight is greatly impaired by the brightness of the sun.
Countermeasures: Sunglasses and heavy padding on her superhero tracksuit (also, trying real hard not to get punched).
Shard (Upstart)
Name/Role: Maggie Walters is ‘Shard’, the ‘Lancer’ of the group. She has the strongest combat capabilities in the group, but lacks the experience and temperament to be the leader.
Power: Shard can shoot (get this) shards from her palms. She also has a powerful healing factor.
Drawback: The healing factor only works while she’s asleep, meaning a quick nap will fix her up, but she won’t recover while fighting. This is problematic, as the shards she can fire are made from her literal blood, sweat, and tears, meaning she becomes dehydrated and exhausted very quickly if she overuses her power.
Countermeasure: Gatorade, lots of it. Also an armband that can intravenously rejuvenate her so that she doesn’t die of blood loss.
Kineticist (Doesn’t Really Want to Be Here)
Name/Role: Nick Russo is the ‘Kineticist’. A high achieving engineering student at a prestigious city college, he was talked into joining C-Team #24 to fulfill several Gen-Ed requirements. The De Facto ‘Smart Guy’ of the group, he designs all of C-Team #24’s countermeasures and assorted gear.
Power: Kineticist (just call him ‘Nick’) unconsciously stockpiles energy every time he moves, thinks, talks… anything that expends energy. He can release this stockpiled energy at any time through concentrated beams.
Drawback: Nick has to use all of the stockpiled power whenever he chooses to expend it, he can’t use little bits followed by large bursts, it’s all-or-nothing.
Countermeasure: As the team’s designer, Nick has spent most of his time focusing on the other members of the team, and only thought to invest in a 5-Hour Energy for himself.
Very interesting breakdown of all of these C-level superheroes. Although I must admit, I have never heard about these superheroes before it was definitely refreshing to hear about some “underdog” superheroes if you will. Shard was my favorite!
These are actually all original characters made for the blog, I’m very glad that you like them! It means a lot as a content creator to hear.
I enjoyed this a lot, I didn’t know about these superheroes beforehand. I didn’t know there were levels of superheroes that are split up into Teams. If you’ve seen Agents of Shield I think their team is sort of like the Team-C, as they have powers but they need equipment to keep their powers from backfiring.