This is quite possibly the creepiest thing I’ve ever made in HeroMachine – which I guess is kind of appropriate since he’s quite possibly the creepiest character I’ve ever made.
Mr. Fright represents the childhood fear of bogeymen and things that go bump in the night, but also a very different kind of fear – an adult fear. As Toby Falls he used his position as the caretaker of an orphanage to abuse vulnerable children unwilling or unable to tell anyone what had been done to them, and after discovering that children were not the only ones susceptible to his powers he made a name for himself by delving into super-crime, becoming head of a crime ring responsible for trafficking guns, drugs, and even people into the UK and Ireland.
He has the ability to invoke emotional discomfort within a target, ranging from mild paranoia or depression to hallucinations and mass hysteria; this, coupled with the ability to distort electrical signals and his extensive knowledge of hypnotism and psychological manipulation mean even the most courageous superheroes and the most depraved supervillians are wary of him, and his business partners are too unnerved to even consider crossing him.
The low-key nature of Mr. Fright’s criminal activities kept him mostly off the radar and allowed him to operate without attracting the attention of government-sponsored superhumans who would be more than capable of shutting him down; it wasn’t until he made the mistake of kidnapping a young girl from a grammar school in Northern Ireland that he met his match in the form of Badger, an Irish vigilante with a reputation for brutality. After a tense standoff Badger did what the combined efforts of the Metropolitan and Northern Irish Police services could not; he saved the girl in a daring rescue that was captured in a live broadcast on the BBC news, apprehended Fright, violently tortured him and dumped his crippled body in a wheelie bin.
Unfortunately, this was not the end; after regaining consciousness, Fright then discovered he possessed a regenerative healing factor which not only granted immunities to most toxins and poisons but allowed for severed limbs to be completely regrown at an astonishing rate; he has also mastered the ability to lengthen body parts and appendages at will through growth of limbs, and as he is capable of strengthening his bone and musculature structure every time a limb is regrown or replaced, this makes him even more deadly than he was before.
