Defender (Minors)

 aka Jared Sanchez

First Appearance - Defender #500 / Minor League #1 Member of - The Minors

Prowess 4 Coordination 4 Strength 4 Intellect 3 Awareness 3 Willpower 4

Stamina 8 Determination 2

Gadgets Wrist Line Launcher


 * Binding 4

Defender Battlesuit


 * Invulnerability 4
 * Blast (Blasting) 6 - 9-terawatt particle beam (can stunt to a Shooting version by employing the Implosion missiles)
 * Invisibility 4

Specialities Acrobatics Expert Drive Expert Leadership Mechanics Expert Athletics Expert Languages

Qualities Contacts : Large circle of friends Catchphrase: This city needs a Defender Identity : Legacy superhero (he's the third generation of the Sanchez family to take up the mantle of Defender)

Challenges Enemy : The Dragons (a local gang, an enemy for Jared more than Defender) Social : Mexican-descended high school kid Weakness : Vengeful and obsessed

Physical Description
Sixteen-year-old Jared is just over 5’ 9” tall and weighs 145 lbs. He has a muscular build and his hands and skin are rough from working outdoors helping his grandfather in the scrap yard. He has brown eyes and blue hair. His skin colour is slightly darker than Caucasian and is indicative of his Mexican origins.

Clothing wise, Jared prefers loose fitting garments that are easier to move around in. He wears a full motocross helmet when using his dirt bike, which, unlike the bike was not salvaged and was bought new.

Background
Jared is the most recent incarnation of Defender. A position he inherited when his father Sam, the previous Defender, died in action. He himself had inherited it from his father, Jared's grandfather Miguel.

From an early age, Jared was mostly raised by his grandfather. Both his mother and father had full time jobs that often involved lengthy overtime. Consequently, Jared would often go to the scrap yard owned by his grandfather after school until one of his parents (usually his mother) picked him up.

His father’s night time activities as Defender prevented Sam from spending a lot of time with his son. When Jared’s mother was killed in a drive-by shooting shortly after his 7th birthday, Jared's grandfather increasingly began to look after the boy during the week.

Jared now knows the reason behind his father's frequent absences but at the time, this caused some friction between the two of them. Because of this, father and son began to grow apart causing a conflict for Sam between his duty as a hero, and his duty as a father. It is ironic that Jared had an unofficial poster of Defender printed by a comic book on his bedroom wall. Jared looked up to the hero but his father never felt it was right to tell him the truth. He was still too young.

When Jared turned nine, his father bought him a dog as a birthday present. Jared named him Bucky and the two have since become inseparable. When his father died, Jared refused to come out of his room for two days and Bucky was the only one he allowed in.

The presence of his grandfather was a stabilising influence for Jared growing up and he instilled in the boy a strong sense of right and wrong. Since he spent much of his time at his grandfathers scrap yard, Jared became interested in mechanics and, encouraged by his grandfather, he spent two months restoring a dirt bike someone had dumped at the scrap yard.

18 months ago, Jared's father was seriously wounded during a battle. Although he defeated the gang members he was fighting and handed them over to the police, the wounds he had sustained were ultimately fatal. He had lost a lot of blood and was suffering from major internal bleeding. Sam made it home before finally succumbing to his wounds, dying on the kitchen floor.

Jared was not home that evening, he had been at the inaugural game for the city's new Major League baseball team, the Liberty Rockets, with his friends Mark and Lee. The only person home at the time was Jared's grandfather. He realised that if Defender's real identity was ever revealed it would place his grandson's life in danger so he stripped Sam of his costume and made it look like he had been the tragic victim of a home invasion. Jared came home to find police cars surrounding his home and his father's body being loaded into the coroners van. Since his grandfather was his only living relative, Jared went to live with his grandfather at the scrap yard.

Two months later, Jared discovered a hidden workshop inside several connected boxcars buried beneath a pile of rusting cars. Inside he found his grandfathers old costume, his father’s bloodstained bodysuit and the prototype BattleSuit built by his father. After Jared angrily confronted him, his grandfather admitted that his Sam had been Defender and that he had been Defender before him. He had concealed the truth as he felt the boy would not understand and would do something foolish like use the BattleSuit to pick up where his father was left off. Being Defender had robbed him of his legs, taken his son and he'd be damned if he would lose his grandson too.

Of course, there was no going back now. Jared wouldn't take "you're too young" as an answer. He'd carry on the “family business” either with or without his grandfather’s help. Therefore, to ensure that he didn't get himself killed, he began training Jared to use the suit and the various gadgets that he and Sam had built. It took nearly four months before his grandfather finally agreed that he was ready and he took to the streets. As far as the media and the public were concerned, Defender was back and not a moment too soon. The local street gangs had taken advantage of Defender’s absence. No one had any idea that this new Defender was the grandson of Mexican immigrants and no one suspected that he was really a 15-year-old kid in a suit of power armour.

Recently there has been a dramatic increase in gang violence in North Edge and the neighbourhood has been described as a "virtual war zone" by some in the media. His grandfather is increasingly worried that his grandson is pushing himself too hard. Jared has taken to expanding the hidden bunker under the scrap yard, hollowing out the ground and building a garage and workshop. With his grandfather's help, Jared has also been able to correct some of the design flaws in the original Defender Armour. It’s obvious that his father never intended the prototype to be used "in the field.”

Defender Battlesuit
The new Mk 1 Defender Armour is a vast improvement over the prototype model that Jared used previously. The Z-Neutrino energy projector, which was capable of molecular disintegration has been replaced by a shoulder mounted missile launcher armed with five Particle Implosion missiles. The warheads cause localised gravitational stresses at the impact point that ignore armour. A 9-terawatt particle beam forms the armour's main offensive ranged weapon. Since it is capable of being modulated to a non-lethal frequency, Jared prefers to use it over less subtle attack methods. Sonic dampeners and smart liquid crystal coating give the armour an impressive stealth mode. Although it's not possible to render the suit invisible, it comes damn close in poor lighting conditions. One of the improvements that Jared made was to the helmet making it much easier to remove in an emergency. Since the suit is environmentally sealed, it is airtight. A fatal vulnerability when the suit is struck by an EMP; something that Jared discovered by accident when fighting a smarter than average bank robber. The armour plates and skintanium undersuit are impervious to normal gunfire. Finally, the "production" model has two features that his father never thought to include in the prototype. An XM Satellite Radio with MP3 playback capability and air conditioning.

Notes: 50 point build, build & art by blaster219