Post by Martin Findlay-Lewis on Jan 16, 2012 14:18:31 GMT -5
MARTIN FINDLAY-LEWIS
Name: MARTIN FINDLAY-LEWIS
Age: 32
Gender: Male
~~~~~
Codename: None confirmed at this time.
Ability: Having excised his mutant genes through surgery and sorcery, Martin has no superhuman abilities, and his strength, stamina and reflexes are at the norm for a middle-aged man who visits the gym regularly and eats well. Some have claimed his intelligence was enhanced somehow along the way, but this is unconfirmed and more than likely slander from parties with grievances against him.
Group: None. Is on friendly terms with various Avengers and X-Men but has never been a member of any team.
~~~~~
Status: Neutral
Occupation: CEO, tech guru, philanthropist, futurist.
Physical Description:
Standing a hair beneath 5'9", Martin does not cut a particularly imposing figure in the midst of the superhumans he's lived most of his life around. His skin is pale and hairy but largely unblemished, and his physique is akin to that of a professional swimmer, muscular but extremely slim. He has sunken cheeks and a thin mouth, and distinctively hooded eyes. His brown hair is usually kept short and sweeps forward naturally. Though he shaves frequently, he still always seems to wind up with a five o'clock shadow.
Clothing-wise, Martin favours simplicity, sticking to a Hong Kong-tailored suit over a more expensive brand name, typically in black or navy with a rose-coloured shirt beneath it and wing-tip shoes. His only affectation of note is a broach shaped like a wire-frame globe, typically affixed to a breast pocket. It's the logo for his company.
Personality:
Martin is at heart a private man who chooses to keep his cards close to his chest, which leads to him outwardly acting more approachable and sociable than he really is. He is extremely driven and focused, but is capable of keeping his eye on the horizon without losing track of the here-and-now. He's also rather selfless, and is perfectly willing to endure pain, indignity and poverty if it will help accomplish whatever his current goal is.
Martin is not prone to letting emotion cloud his judgement, but any mention of his father will put him on edge and make him suspicious that he's being cross-examined somehow. Additionally, he's not great with women. He's not bad either, exactly...he just finds it difficult to care about them in the way they'd want him to.
~~~~~
Parents: James Howlett. aka Logan, aka Wolverine (father, separated); Diana Lewis (mother, deceased); Stephen Findlay (step-father, deceased)
Siblings: None
History:
Martin Lewis was born in Somerset, England, whilst his mother was imprisoned within the slave camps of Kang the Conqueror during his most ambitious (and successful) attempt at taking over the 21st-century Earth to date. After Kang's defeat and the world's recovery, Diana would go on to marry a grammar school teacher named Stephen Findlay, hence Martin taking the name at age 3. He was always curious, however, about the identity of his birth father, something his mother chose to keep from him.
Unfortunately, her efforts to ensure her boy a normal life were put paid to by a vampire invasion of the United Kingdom several years later. Caught up in a battle between the undead menace and Captain Britain, Martin was clawed and thrown off a bridge, only to land atop the mast of a moored boat, which impaled him straight through his stomach. For a moment, he died. Then his wounds knitted themselves together and his heart resumed beating, and Martin woke up in a world of sheer agony. Captain Britain pulled him off the mast and flew Martin to the nearest hospital, but the rest of Martin's injuries had healed en-route. When she heard of this, Diana's face sank into a miserable frown. It was then that she revealed the truth to Martin; that he was the product of a one-night stand between Diana and a wanderer named Logan, who she realised only later was the famous X-Man and New Avenger, Wolverine.
Martin, who had grown up idolising the Avengers like every other child, was amazed by this, and spent most of his time through high school wondering how he could ever find a way to meet his real father, much to the disappointment of Diana and Stephen. He kept his identity a secret from other kids his age, even his closest friends, believing that "that's what superheroes do!", and dedicated himself to his studies ferociously, reasoning that if he were to ever become an X-Man or Avenger himself - and he wanted to - he would need to be one of the smartest men alive, not to mention fully versed in the justice system and aware of how global politics worked. Then, he started researching the exploits of Wolverine.
It didn't go well.
Where Martin was expecting to be reading engravings of gold plaques celebrating the life of a fantastic superhero, instead he spent weeks dredging through old coroner's reports, visiting mortuaries, and talking to embittered, disfigured supervillains through jail visits. It all added up to one clear fact: his father was no hero. He was a hired thug, a contract murderer, whose only redeeming trait was a tendency to ply his trade in service of other, 'cleaner' heroes who knew better than to let such acts dirty their reputations. And this was a man who had lived for literally centuries without growing even a fraction of nobility...? Martin was devastated. Returning home early from university, he embraced his now-elderly mother and the father whom he once rejected but now saw more clearly, then told them both that he wouldn't see them again.
As the world slowly shifted from one era to the next, and the last generation of Avengers and mutants began to step out of the spotlight, Martin was quietly busy. He started as a typist for the ailing OsCorp - which had never recovered from its association with Norman Osborn's infamous dark reign - and proceeded up the company ranks until eventually landing in the CEO's office. He then merged the company successfully with Fisktronics and Hammer Industries, then rebranded the now-powerful resulting organisation as Chrysalis Inc. This rapid growth, and Chrysalis' surprising shift of focus onto long-term terraforming and quantum mechanics projects, caught the eye of some very important people...which was just what Martin wanted. Being allowed in the same room with great minds like Tony Stark and Reed Richards was an honour, and a very enlightening experience as well. It was with their help that Martin was able to isolate and remove the mutant genes from his DNA, something that was kept quiet and still has yet to be revealed to the public, who never knew Martin was a mutant to begin with. In between all this, Martin made large - and very public - donations to both the Xavier Institute and the Maria Stark Foundation, ensuring that his public image remained overwhelmingly positive despite his distaste for PR.
Both his parents died last year, months apart. Martin paid for and attended the funerals, despite having stayed true to his word to never see them again while they were alive.
It was only after they were both gone that Martin finally felt comfortable visiting Logan. Quietly paying off the security at Stark Tower, Martin confronted the former Wolverine - older now, but still in prime shape thanks to his constant healing - with the damning evidence, then spoke:
"For a while, I wanted so badly to kill you. I think you deserve that for all the pain you've caused over the years - not to me, but to everyone who's ever known you. Tell me, what lives have you improved, Logan? Who among the people you like to pretend are your friends can honestly say they're better off for knowing you? None of them. I get that you like to think you were forced somehow to act how you did...how you continue to. But free will isn't an illusion, and every man is responsible for the decisions he makes. You stood beside Captain America for years. Captain America! The 'Sentinel of Liberty'! The greatest human who ever lived. You could have learned from his example and become a better man, but I guess that was too difficult for you. So you stayed the same...mongrel that you had been for the last 200 years. You've never loved anyone, and nobody's ever loved you back. The only reason anyone even remembers you is the trail of bodies you've left in your wake. That's your legacy. Death and misery. Well, it won't be mine. I've got plans, old man. Some of them are radical, some of them aren't very nice, some are so unlikely that I don't even know if they'll make it past design...but they all lead to a brighter tomorrow, not for me, but for the human race. And that's why I'm not trying to kill you. Because frankly, I want you to live long enough to see the world enter an age where men like you will simply cease to matter. Then, the next time someone asks who you are, you can tell them the truth. That you're a bitter, selfish, angry dog, and nothing more."
Logan had no response to that.
Martin continues to operate as the CEO of Chrysalis, keeping his eye on the new generation of heroes while praying they know enough to follow the right example...