Legend is the leader of the Protectorate in general and the New York Protectorate team specifically.
Personality
Legend is probably closest to the classic superhero that Worm offers, heroic noble and willing to make sacrifices for others[citation needed]. As part of the leading heroes of the Protectorate Legend is seen as a paragon of what a hero should be, acting on and off the camera largely the same.[1][2] Legend is gay, married for quite some time, and he is the reason gay rights has progressed much further in Earth Bet than our own[citation needed].[3]
Appearance
Legend has wavy brown hair and a square jaw.[4] He is tall, with a lean, muscular physique.[5] He is considered noticeably attractive by Skitter.[4]
He wears a skintight blue costume with white lightning/flame designs. His costume includes boots and gloves.[5] His mask is blue and silver, and leaves his mouth, chin, hair and some of his forehead uncovered.[6]
Abilities and Powers
As a member of the Triumvirate, Legend is considered one of the most powerful parahumans in North America. His powers are summarized as "flying artillery": he can fly, shoot lasers from his body, and endure strong attacks. Attacks from Behemoth, Leviathan and Siberian have all been devastating enough that they were sufficient to take him out of the fight.[7]
His lasers were primarily blue-white[8]. These beams can turn corners, fork into multiple lasers, pass through walls, and freeze and/or ignite his targets. He can use different effects creating cutting, disintegration, impact, heat, focused, staccato bursts, fat lasers, and invisible lasers. He could combine these effects, but this took time to investigate and he rarely faced threats that necessitated the needed effort.[9] The 'freezing' laser actually lowers the temperature at the point of contact close to absolute zero, damaging the target and freezing ambient moisture.[9] The 'heat ray' that ignited a target works on a similar principle.
A known strange feature of his lasers is that they can bend around corners.[10] This versatility extends to him splitting lasers he's fired into multiple smaller lasers.[11] Further he can radiate an unheard of number of his lasers when he needs to. He can increase the size and power of lasers but requires time to do it.[12]?
Legend can accelerate to a speed that exceeds the speed of sound and continue accelerating, to no hard limit. However, surviving at these speeds requires the use of his secondary Breaker ability.[7] He was one of, if not the, fastest heroes alive. On one occasion, he flew halfway around the planet in an extremely short period of time, seemingly a matter of moments; arriving a full five or six minutes before even Alexandria.[13]
Legend's breaker power changes his body to living light. As he becomes more like light, he is able to fly faster and ignore most attacks, though it impairs his ability to think. While in this state, he absorbs most kinds of energy, using it to repair his human form.[14] This transformation happens instinctively to avoid injury, usually when he is struck or when he flies too fast.[7] It allows him to survive in time dilated environments without food or water absorbing ambient energy sources.
As a related minor power,[7] he has perfect, superhumanly clear vision,[15] only blocked by things like solids and gasses like cloud and mist. He took advantage of this by learning to lip read,[16] and to shoot accurately over large distances.[17]
History
Background
Legend received his powers as part of Cauldron's program, becoming a founding member of the Protectorate. He was present for Behemoth's emergence in 1992.[18] After Hero's death, he became the leader of a smaller team based in New York.[19]
When Leviathan approached Brockton Bay, Legend took the opportunity to inform every parahuman there of the odds of survival.[20] This was something that he as a veteran of such engagements, was rarely able to do.[21]
Post-Leviathan
Despite the risks to both himself and the citizens of the city, he deployed with his team against the Slaughterhouse Nine when they came to Brockton Bay.
He recognized William Manton and confronted his co-conspirators, secretly armed with a lie-detector. He discovered that they were responsible for the Case 53s and had been lying to him for years.[22]
Post-Slaughterhouse Nine
Despite knowing that his teammates had been lying to him for years he repeated the same lies to Gully and Weld given the gravity of the situation the Protectorate faced.[16]
He was able to keep two Alexandria clones busy during a fight but that also meant that he could not help When Echidna and her creations were fighting the others.
Post-Echidna
Legend stepped down as leader of the Protectorate after his ties to Cauldron were revealed.
He was briefly trapped in accelerated time by Khonsu, but survived by entering his breaker state. By the time the Endbringer dropped the effect, an enormous charge of light had built up inside it. This charge was redirected by Eidolon.
Gold Morning
Chevalier asked Legend to become his second-in-command in the new Protectorate after Revel's death, and he accepted.
He served throughout the event.
Post-Gold Morning
Was a part of the Wardens when the group was announcing themselves to the city. Welcome the new member Valkyrie.
Early-Ward
Two years after the event he still part of The Wardens. Just as in the Protectorate he is considered one of the groups key members, and has his statue in HQs lobby.[23]
Trivia
- According to Valkyrie, Legend is the keeper of the "Coruscant Knave" shard,[24] an example of Valkyrie's use of antiquated language.
- Also how hard it is to describe the function of the shards.
- Like Eidolon his powers were considered highly classified.[1]
Fanart Gallery
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Interlude 19.y
- ↑ Legend's other contact with Taylor was pretty fair. He had a serious situation on his hands, and he outlined options. He didn't twist her arm (though it's easy to mix up what he was saying with what Armsmaster was saying) but did push one option as it was (in his mind) the best option available.- Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles
- ↑ chassisbird:
I really love this story, but it makes me really uncomfortable that the only gay characters so far are Legend, who is a single-chapter background guy, and Amy, who is a character driven to do something awful by her love for another girl.
wildbow:
You’re downplaying how important Legend is in the setting.
Further, you’re missing two others who’ve come up and had their attraction get mentioned – it’s not blatant, but it’s there, and it does get more attention later. Considering that romantic entanglements and relationships don’t get mentioned that often, I think it’s a pretty good track record for GBLTQABBQ inclusion. - Reply to a comment on Interlude 15x - ↑ 4.0 4.1 Extermination 8.1
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Interlude 13
- ↑ That, apparently, was enough to get Legend's attention. He rose from the street level and surveyed the scene. He'd taken off the hazmat-style mask and filter, and what little I could see of his expression was drawn. His eyes were narrowed, a vein stood out on his forehead, and he furtively looked from Vista to me and back again.
[...]
Was I suffering from brain damage? Another concussion?
[...]
I didn't know the people who were on the rooftop with me: the man who floated in the air, wearing a sturdy hazmat-style firesuit and a blue and silver mask that left only his mouth, chin and wavy brown hair exposed. - Prey 14.8 - ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Legend’s flight powers let him accelerate to a speed that exceeded sound and continue accelerating, to no hard limit. The soft limit was that he had breaker powers that kept the acceleration from tearing him to shreds, altering his body into something else entirely as he gained speed. The drawback to this was that his brain also shut down on a cognitive level as the transformation occurred. He had never let himself go so fast that he lost the ability to consciously control his movements.
There were other benefits too. He was better at registering and processing light waves, regardless of which state he was in. He could see with perfect clarity up until the point that an obstactle intervened or the atmosphere occluded his vision.
If an opponent attacked and struck him, he instinctively transitioned into his energy form for a split second. In that state, he absorbed energy of a variety of kinds, including the kinetic energy that was transferred with a punch or with a bullet. His opponents were forced to whittle him down, each attack only a fraction as effective as it might otherwise be. Even then, a share of that small amount of damage was healed a second later as he used the absorbed energy to mend his body. Conversely, his enemies could try to hit him with enough speed and force that even a hundredth of a second of contact was sufficient to take him out of the fight. Leviathan and Behemoth had managed to land blows of that magnitude. - Excerpt from Interlude 14.y - ↑ He doesn't shoot rainbows. His lasers are primarily blue-white. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Cutting, disintegration, impact, heat, focused, staccato bursts, fat lasers, invisible lasers. The freezing laser isn't so much a 'create ice' laser as a 'this deals damage and then frost spreads out from the site of impact'.
He can combine them, but he's not typically in situations where he needs to, and it's sort of something that takes time to figure out, like putting your gun together in the middle of the battlefield when you could just whip out another gun that's bound to do the job. - Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles - ↑ Legend can shoot lasers from his hands, lasers that turn corners. - Agitation 3.11
- ↑ Legend shot the Eidolon-clone before he could do anything more. A laser tore into the Eidolon’s chest cavity, slashed out to carve into Echidna’s foremost leg, causing it to buckle mid-step.
The Alexandria-clone floated up, interjecting herself between Legend and his targets. He adjusted the beam’s orientation, and she moved to block it. He divided it in two shots that she couldn’t block, and she charged him. Legend broke off to flee. - Scourge 19.6 - ↑ An enemy that hit too hard to defend against, too tough to hurt. Eidolon teleported rather than try to stand up to his lasers, Alexandria took a glancing blow and plunged to the ground. Legend peppered Scion, paused, then hit him with a bigger laser.
When that failed, Legend doubled down again. - Extinction 27.4 - ↑ Scarab 25.4
- ↑ He traveled over the Atlantic Ocean, moving so fast that the water appeared to be one flat plane. His thoughts became a blur, and he was forced to focus on his destination, letting all other thoughts and doubts fall by the wayside.
It was refreshing, in a way, cleansing himself of the responsibilities and the thousands of problems he was forced to handle as the leader of the Protectorate. Still, it always scared him just a little.
It took him only an instant to reach a complete stop. He let himself settle down into his real body once more.
He’d wondered sometimes if his ability to fly was meant for travel on an interstellar level. What if he kept accelerating? His breaker power would let him weather the void of space, his ability to see would be that much more powerful if there was no atmosphere to occlude his vision over miles… even the boredom of traveling for years was nothing if his conscious mind shifted into a rest state.
Not that he’d ever test it.
He’d absorbed light, heat and ambient radiation while he flew, and he felt restored. Even the mildest wear and tear had been tended to, his body restored to peak condition. - Excerpt from Interlude 14.y - ↑ Prey 14.7
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Scourge 19.4
- ↑ A scattering of Legend’s laser bolts tore through our surroundings, though he was blocks away. Three of the Kudzu I was fighting were hit by Legend’s shots, and Weld lunged forward to stab the fourth. - Scourge 19.5
- ↑ Interlude 15.z
- ↑ Comment by Wildbow on Reddit
- ↑ Extermination 8.1]]
- ↑ Extermination 8.2
- ↑ Interlude 14.y
- ↑ Inside the building, statues of key members stood off to either side of the lobby. Chevalier, Narwhal, Valkyrie, Legend, Cinereal, Stonewall, Topflight and Miss Militia.
[...]
“Is Weld getting a statue?” Tristan asked.
“Not for a while,” Sveta said. “That’s more for people who’ve put in the years, and he only just got in. He’s got a preliminary thing in the gift shop.” - Excerpt from Glare 3.6 - ↑ Teneral e.1
Template:PRT Dep01 NYC